


Leather Apron

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 19th Century, Alliances, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angel Castiel, Angst, Aristocracy, BAMF Castiel, Bisexual Dean, Brothels, Brother Feels, Brotherly Bonding, Castiel Has a Crush on Dean, Comfort/Angst, Dean Has a Crush on Castiel, Dean Hates Witches, Death Rituals, Declarations Of Love, Demonic Possession, Detective Dean Winchester, Detective Sam Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, England (Country), F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Femslash, First Kiss, Flirting, Gen, Harvelle's Roadhouse, Heaven, Hell, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Jack the Ripper - Freeform, Kissing, Light Bondage, London, M/M, Making Out, Murder, Murder Mystery, Nervous Dean, Nobility, Outdoor Sex, Prostitution, Protective Castiel, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Sam, Ritual Killing, Romance, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Secret Society, Serial Killers, Sex, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Build Castiel/Dean Winchester, Slow Burn, Violence, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:22:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1888, soiled doves are dropping like flies in the Whitechapel district of London at the hands of a killer no one can identify. Castiel, Earl of Rothes, funds the investigation by two men from New York City - Sam and Dean Winchester - who have reputations for tracking down the most violent and difficult murderers. It looks like a normal murder investigation until Dean and Sam begin to realize something isn't right. Perhaps demons are not just biblical stories after all, and it might not be a human killer they’re hunting. Soon Dean and Castiel tumble into an affair of the utmost secrecy right under the Countess' nose, though it appears she has an affair of her own. And then as Dean starts questioning exactly why Castiel wants killer caught so badly, he realizes something’s not quite human about him or his cold wife either. Their marriage was designed to keep the peace between Heaven and Hell, but it’s all falling apart thanks to the demon known as Jack the Ripper. Can Sam and Dean hunt down the demon while keeping Castiel, Jessie, Jo, and their other London friends safe from harm?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a multi-chapter story. The tags will make sense as it progresses.

September 8, 1888  
Whitechapel, London  
5:24 AM

It was the perfect hunting ground and she would do nicely for that night. Moronic newspapermen would label her the second victim – the poor, poor soiled dove that society never bothered to notice until her bloody corpse met the dawn. But she wasn't his second. Six other fallen women knew his murderous embrace all over the stinking, foul, darkened streets around London.

He had to make quick work of it. Daylight threatened.

She wore black; rough and simple like every other fallen woman in Whitechapel. A single face among thousands of ignored and forgotten in crowded, disease ridden slums. He followed her as casually as a gentleman strolling through a park. The woman huddled close herself and tugged a white neckerchief with a red border tighter around her shoulders. Something nagged within, sensing the predator, though she ignored it. Survival demanded money for a bed and shelter while she slept. Only one trade availed itself to isolated, middle-aged women like her in that idealistic, strict Victorian world.

Turning toward Spitalfields Market, he swooped in on Hanbury Street where the residents still slept. Always narrowed and suspicious blue eyes peered up at his face the moment she spotted him examining her like produce from a street vendor. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall with a pallid complexion suggesting that disease that he knew ravaged her lungs. He knew every detail of her forty-seven years on Earth.

"Fancy a ride, sir?" she asked in an attempt at flirtation so much younger than her age.

He strode closer, pinning her back against the shutters of the house. "Will you?"

"Yes," she replied, though her defenses tensed her body.

A curled finger covered by a black leather glove beckoned her out of sight along a rear fence between buildings. It concealed them from prying eyes passing by on the street.

Still so very dark in Whitechapel, she didn't even see it coming. He required no weapon for his work, though feeble human police minds would find her in short order and determine she'd been butchered with various blades. Perhaps tradesman. Butchers or upholsterers. Some horrified society minds might even recoil at the idea of an intelligent, civilized physician doing the grisly deed. The feebleness of the human mind never ceased to amuse him. He nearly chuckled out loud right there, seeing it all as if it had already happened.

"My lord and master thanks you for your sacrifice," he said, raspy and deep.

He leaned into the glow of a gaslight on the corner and allowed her to see his true self, the blackness flooding his eyes and leaving no human irises behind. Panic stricken her into silence as she realized her fate. Some women screamed like banshees when they set eyes upon his true nature, while others, like this Annie Chapman, became paralyzed by their own terror. The flaws of human mechanisms were fascinating, indeed.

"No!"

Squelching her cry with a squeezed fist, his inhuman power ruptured the life-sustaining artery in her neck without ever setting a finger on her body. Blood drained from her throat and she slumped against the fence with a loud, sickening thump, and then the last moment of life dropped her to the ground. Rarely did they feel any pain, those sacrificial lambs. Sweet, imbecilic, trusting little lambs, he thought as he passed a leather gloved hand over her dark, wavy hair. Lifeless, cloudy eyes stared ahead at nothing, the soul having departed for that other place – the place his master once knew before being cast into his own domain, rejected by his father.

He set to work immediately and conducted the ceremony with quick precision. The corpse required the correct positioning and mutilation in order for the blood to be sanctified for his master's use.

Little did those feebleminded humans know exactly how powerful the blood of the falsely accused and martyred among their own kind could be.

*****

September 20, 1888  
Mayfair, London

"It's been two days. I still feel like the ground is moving beneath my feet," mumbled Dean Winchester as the coach rolled to a stop before one of the enormous Portland stone mansions. He planted his walking stick between his feet and held onto it as if it might keep him from swaying on a phantom ship.

His brother, younger by years but older by wisdom, glanced at him with a sly smile as he flipped open the coach door. "Pull yourself together. I don't think these are the kind of folk that care if working-class scruffs like us are prone to seasickness. Well, I mean you. I didn't feel a thing the entire voyage." Sam's sly smile turned cocky as he hopped out onto the street and waited for the older brother.

"I still don't have the foggiest idea why we're here in the first place," Dean replied. A fine lady in a perfectly pressed chocolate silk dress with the bustle carefully gathered over her rear, a matching bonnet, leather gloves, and a fur muff strolled by with her nose pointed in the air. Dean touched the brim of his bowler hat and gave her a polite nod the way they did in America, yet she didn't acknowledge him. "Scenery's nice though," he added with a smirk.

Sam grabbed the sleeve of Dean's jacket and, with an eye roll, pulled him along to the great mansion.

They were led into a library by a butler who resembled every other butler in those well-to-do neighborhoods all over the West End of London as well as Fifth Avenue in their home of New York City. Rich people weren't so different from city to city, Dean decided as he wandered around examining the selection of books. He had heard of none of them. Reading wasn't really his great skill anyway. He felt much more at home chasing down pickpockets, murderers, rapists, and thieves in Five Points. He guessed by the request that great Earl of Something had telegraphed their precinct that London police and detectives weren't worth a hill of beans if they sent all the way to New York City for someone to catch a murderer.

"Dean, sit down," beckoned Sam, who straightened his jacket as if he actually cared about what those hoity-toity people thought of him.

Before Dean could answer back, the butler stiffly entered the room and announced, "His Grace, Castiel, Earl of Rothes," and promptly stepped aside with the kind of stiffness still that made Dean wonder if all butlers had sticks installed in their asses before getting hired.

The brothers exchanged peculiar glances as Sam, obviously not knowing what to do, burst out of the armchair to his full height - well over six feet tall.

Rather simply suited in black with a steel gray waistcoat, the Earl greeted them with the kind of cool propriety that his position demanded. He never shook hands. Things done in America were apparently considered too close for comfort, making Dean believe all the English were cold and humorless. Yet, as he looked at the Earl's bright blue eyes and the way his full mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile after all, something intrigued him. Dark, messy hair suggested he didn't care so much about his appearance as others in his position did. He nodded politely to Sam but he held Dean's eyes for a beat longer as if trying to read something private in him.

Dean cleared his throat and averted his eyes. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Earl."

Again, his full mouth twitched. He found it amusing.

Then it was Sam's turn to uncomfortably clear his throat. "Your Grace, forgive my brother. We're simple Kansas boys. We just don't know how to address people of noble heritage," he said, fumbling his way through words that were certainly wrong.

"Your Grace?" Dean's nose wrinkled before he could stop it, the quiet entreaty passing to Sam nearby.

Sam hissed, "That's what you're supposed to say."

"Gentlemen, you needn't worry," came the Earl's first words. "I foresee us working quite closely to search out and capture the Whitechapel killer, and in which case, I see no useful titles. You may simply call me by my given name, Castiel."

That was the strangest name Dean had ever heard. "You French or something?"

Abruptly, Sam's boot stomped over the toe of his own boot in a warning to keep his mouth shut because clearly everything he said was disrespectful.

"No, Mr. Winchester," replied Castiel, that smile threatening again, though neither of them actually saw it. "I am, as you might say, foreign to England but I'm not French. Please, gentlemen, have a seat. You must be quite exhausted from such a long journey. I've got a footman bringing up tea and biscuits from the kitchen for you."

"Nice pile of bricks you got here," commented Dean as he planted himself on the nearest sofa, deciding it looked far more comfortable than the stiff armchair Sam favored.

"Yes, thank you," Castiel said. His blue eyes glanced around the library as if he'd never really looked at it before. "It's just a house. My wife, Margaret, decided our country estate was too dull and secluded for her taste. She prefers the excitement of city life in the cooler months."

The way he spoke of his wife with such indifference struck Dean as peculiar. He might as well have been speaking of a maid or a distant neighbor down the street.

"Your Grace - I mean Castiel, sir - why is it that you requested American detectives for a simple murder investigation? Does your own police force not have detectives?" asked Sam, eager to get down to business.

Kindly, Castiel gave him full attention as he lowered himself in the closest chair. "American detectives are not swayed by English prejudices and politics. This is, Mr. Winchester, anything but a simple murder investigation. Were you not given any of the particulars before you left New York City?"

"No, sir."

"Hold on," interrupted Dean. "Why do you care about this? You're an Earl of some estate far away from here, I assume, not a servant of the London police. How do we know you're not swayed by some political interest in this murderer and you're using us as some sort of pawns to win your game?"

"Dean--"

"--I expect a reaction nothing less than that from you, Mr. Winchester," Castiel said with some amusement over Sam's pleading for his brother to keep his mouth shut.

That man's quiet, observant way about him of knowing exactly who people were around him unnerved Dean and he found himself leaning forward defensively on the sofa, eyes narrowed. "You don't know us, sir. You've never met us in your life and we've never even heard if you, snotty aristocrat or not, before we set foot in this country. Presumptions like that would get you shot in New York City. Lucky for you, I have no interest in experiencing the fine prison system in this uptight little country of yours."

In spite of the pallor of horror sliding over Sam's face like a veil, Castiel finally let loose and his face erupted in a smile just the way his belly erupted in laughter. He nearly even sounded American the way he laughed at Dean.

"I know more about you than you think," Castiel said once his laughter calmed enough to allow words to pass.

He infuriated Dean, though the detective couldn't quite pinpoint why, but furious fire built up in his gut. He shot up from the sofa and grabbed his brother by the elbow. "C'mon, Sammy. We're getting out of here. I've had enough of these games played by people who think they're better than us just because they have money and breeding."

Just as they hit the threshold of the library doorway, Castiel began to speak in such a monotone voice that all humanity bled away from it. "You are Dean and Sam Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas, sons of John Winchester and Mary Campbell. Dean was born January 24, 1853, and Sam was born May 2, 1857. Your father built and repaired wagons and carriages. Your mother came from a frontier family as rough as it was strict in skills of survival. She was killed in a house fire on August 21, 1863, when Quantrill's Raiders attacked and destroyed Lawrence. Unable to cope with the loss, your father became a drunkard and wandered Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, and Illinois, seeking out each survivor of Quantrill's Raiders to kill them in retribution, leaving your boyhood completely unstable and gave each of you an incoherent education. John Winchester died eight years ago in a failed attempt to kill one of the Raiders. At which point, the both of you settled in New York City and rose through the ranks to become detectives."

Pausing, Castiel twisted around in his chair and looked both men in the eye, who stood utterly stunned in the doorway of the library. He continued, "While Sam is the more studious brother, having admittance to Harvard, he left it all behind to join his adventurous brother. Both of you have excelled at your positions and acquired brutish reputations among the criminal class, as well as inventive reputations among your fellow detectives, solving the most impossible murder cases." He stood and faced them full on. "You see, gentlemen, I know you better than either of you expect. And I know you are the only ones capable of capturing this killer."

"How do you know all of this? You hire spies or something?" Dean demanded.

With a chuckle, the Earl folded his hand behind his back and stepped closer as he spoke. "I have a vested personal interest in the capture of this killer and that, sirs, is all you need to know at this time. You'll be paid handsomely for your work in addition to room and board already arranged. Allowances for personal expenditures will also be provided."

The unfortunate truth was neither Dean nor Sam possessed the funds to get back to America should they refuse working the Earl. How easily he slipped between cold indifference and basic human warmth. It chilled Dean as a something in him warned of something amiss in that man, while another part of him needed to unravel the mystery for himself aside from being part of the Winchester brothers detective work. Exactly how Castiel knew every detail of their upbringing and present lives left him feeling like a raw, exposed nerve, and did not allow him to think clearly at that moment. So, he nodded dumbly, and Sam followed his lead.

"Wonderful, gentlemen. Now, follow me to my personal office, if you please," said Castiel, leading the way.

Deeper into the house they penetrated, through a meandering labyrinth of drawing rooms and a grand central staircase up to the second floor. Castiel brought them to a small, modest office nestled between two bed chambers – obviously one for himself and one for his absent wife. The identity of that woman, whoever she was, had Dean curious. It seemed fairly clear to him that the Earl preferred things to be his way, making him wonder if the wife lead a miserable existence under his control, or if he simply didn't care where she went and with whom she kept company.

Opened file folders scattered across the desk seated at the center of the office. He recognized postmortem photography without effort but said nothing. Somehow he knew Castiel needed to take the lead on explaining everything already collected about the case. The deep, personal vested interest, whatever it was, brought him to a heightened obsession by Dean's estimation.

"There have been seven victims between December 26 of last year and September 8 of this year," explained Castiel as he leapt through his files. "All of them were females and all of them were mutilated, butchered really, and all of them have been located around the East End." Blue eyes flashed up at them, remembering that they were in fact foreigners. "London's poor population lives and works in the East End. Namely Whitechapel. Each of the women has had reputations for leading disreputable lives before they were killed and some of their organs were missing as found by their postmortem examinations. This is not, gentlemen, a typical murder case by any stretch of the imagination. I believe there are ritualistic elements suggesting something rather unholy."

"But we were told in the papers that there have been two victims," said Sam cautiously.

"Indeed," replied Castiel, "newspapermen think they know everything about it already, but I believe earlier murders of similar women have been tied to the same killer." That said, he passed over a file folder containing newspaper clippings to both of the men. "Take this with you and study each case as reported in the papers. Tomorrow night, you will both attend dinner here with my wife and myself where we can discuss fact from fiction."

Dean didn't like how he was brought into that case or how that man knew everything about his family. It still bothered him in spite of his interest in the strange case. Nothing in New York had turned up like that before that he knew of, especially when someone so clearly mutilated victims in such a depraved manner. He accepted the file folder with some hesitation. Strangely, a chill passed over him in accepting the case right there in that office as if a warning beckoned him to give it up and go home. Go back to New York. Get away from that murderer terrorizing fallen women in the impoverished sections of London. Yet he fought those urges and quickly thumbed through the postmortem photographs, routing his mind in the investigation process. He couldn't help himself. The way he approached investigation of any crime resembled the manner a hunter stalked a deer in the woods.

The Earl quickly scrawled an address on a piece of paper and handed it over. "This is the address of the building where you will live while in my employ. It's within walking distance. You needn't waste money on public coaches. Tomorrow we will work out your per diem in greater detail. A widow owns this building by the name of Mrs. Jessie Moore. She's expecting you. Good day, gentlemen."

Apparently, that was it. Castiel was finished with them for the day. For such a highly placed men in society, he certainly lacked polished social skills, Dean marveled to himself.

And so, Sam and Dean Winchester embarked on hunting down the Whitechapel killer.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean found it quite humorous that the great Earl of Rothes couldn't fathom boarding the Winchesters in a district of ill repute. He glanced down at the the address scribbled on the page to make sure it was the right place. Beside him, Sam peered through the apothecary window at the smattering of wealthy people purchasing this or that medication.

"I suppose this is it," he commented.

"Shouldn't he board us in a building closer to the murders?" Dean questioned.

A rather petite lady swathed in black satin with curly blonde hair barely contained at the crown of her head cut across the window and poked her head out from the apothecary door. “Gentlemen, I would greatly appreciate it if you wouldn't loiter outside my shop windows this way. Please, I must impress upon you to come indoors or move along. You're frightening my customers.”

"My apologies, ma'am," Sam said, his American accent more pronounced than ever. "Are you Miss Moore by any chance?"

"Mrs. Moore," she replied. Recognition smoothed her youthful, full face. "Are you my new tenants? Winchesters, I believe. The Americans. His Grace indicated you would arrive today. Please do come indoors and I shall be with you in a moment."

The brothers exchanged glances, not sure of being known in a city they'd never seen before, but followed Mrs. Moore inside the shop. For such a richly furnished place, hardly anyone seemed to buy anything, Dean noticed. He drifted off to one side, tucked his hands behind his back, and observed as he always did. It didn't take a clever man to recognize that Mrs. Moore's income did not, in fact, come from selling cure-all powders and tonics. He'd seen enough back home in the Five Points to know immediately that not everything was as it seemed there.

Once the last customer departed, Mrs. Moore hung the "closed" sign in the window and greeted the brothers with a much more relaxed demeanor.

But Sam, the traditionalist, cleared his throat. "Forgive me, ma'am, but wouldn't it be better if we were to do business with your husband?"

"My husband is dead these three years, sir," she retorted, sharp eyes cutting right through him. Just as abruptly, she beckoned, "Follow me, gentlemen," and rounded the druggist counter toward the rear privacy of the shop floor.

Scowling, Dean slapped his brother's arm and hissed, "Nice going!"

Sam's creased forehead and tight lips indicated his mortification ran deeper than anything Dean could have said.

She led the two of them upstairs through a back stairwell, around a corner, and then took another flight of stairs still higher. Heavy red damask wallpaper darkened the corridors and sideboards against walls displaying crystal vases of flowers or marble busts of people Dean didn't recognize. No, she certainly didn't earn a living in the apothecary downstairs to live upstairs in such fine style. Perhaps her husband left her wealth in his will, but somehow, Dean doubted it. Wealthy men had no need of operating shops on busy pedestrian streets.

"His Grace's footman delivered your trunks over an hour ago," said Mrs. Moore as she pulled a heavy silver chain of keys from her belt. "Three rooms have been paid for already. Two sleeping quarters and a large parlor to use as you please. I ask for no oppressive noise after eight in the evening, as I keep my quarters on the floor below these rooms. I'm afraid this building is rather old and the only convenience shares my floor. Please be considerate and limit your time in the bath and empty out your pots through the alley window, not the street window."

"Not a problem, ma'am," replied Sam before Dean could even open his mouth.

Quick, controlled footsteps led Dean and Sam into the parlor behind Mrs. Moore and they watched, uncertain, as she threw back heavy green drapes from two windows. Light streamed in through glass panes and showed Dean beautiful walnut furnishings with a few cherry wood accents and silk embroidered cushions. He'd never had such fine things in his life. Kansas farm boys lived in a homespun world and no one in Five Points kept things that expensive very long before thieves got to them. Instantly, he felt suspicious of the whole thing, unashamed of his prejudices against wealth - especially wealth acquired by less than scrupulous means.

"Apothecaries must do well in London," he said to the lady.

She blinked and subtly tilted her head, but smiled abruptly, and he guessed she knew exactly what he meant. "Success isn't difficult to find for those who help themselves, Mr. Winchester."

Sam's throat sharply cleared. "Thank you for taking us in, ma'am."

"You needn't thank me," she replied, making her way out of their new third floor flat. "Thank the Earl of Rothes."

The second she passed the flat key to Sam and left, shutting the door behind her black satin skirts, his fist popped Dean's arm. "Don't you have any manners?"

"Sammy, something's not right about that lady and you'd know it if you weren't chasing her skirt like a hungry puppy," Dean retorted as he passed through one of the doors flanking the parlor's fireplace and found himself in one of the sleeping quarters. "I'm taking this room."

"Fine. Leave me the room without windows," barked Sam.

Flopping back on his bed, Dean mumbled, "Don't be a baby."

Clearly, they both needed a nap.

*****

Stretched out on the thickly woven rug, Dean lounged on his elbow with one knee drawn up toward the ceiling. A lamp burned at full gas on the floor between Sam and him, casting flame light over scattered photographs of mutilated corpses and pages of witness accounts.

"This is disturbing," Dean mumbled.

"I know," Sam mumbled back.

The London night even sounded more civilized than New York. Outside, coaches rolled by, transporting people to dinner parties, receptions, the theater, the opera, and yet the horse hooves didn't fall sharply on the ear. Pleasant clip clops passed through the open window. Dean expected Whitechapel sounded more like home, overcrowded with hardworking, sometimes dangerous people. But where the Earl installed them for the duration, it all sounded (and smelled) entirely too civilized for his blood.

"We never saw anything like this back home. I just—" he huffed a sharp sigh, "—what kind of man could do this sort of thing? It’s … it’s barbarism."

"The Earl-I mean Castiel-he’s quite right about the ritualistic elements of these murders," replied Sam, delving into his analytical way of approaching evidence. "Surely the blows to the throats killed most of these women immediately. If the goal was simply to take a life, that would have been sufficient. But there are entire organs harvested. Flesh sliced and placed in strategic places. The killer has a defined purpose. What I don’t understand is how he managed to do these things without being seen. No one claims to have witnessed any women in distress. The bodies were always found hours after they were slain."

Dean’s lips poked out in a thoughtful pout. “Secret societies?”

With a shrug, Sam nodded. “Freemasons, maybe. Surely not university hazing. This is far too extreme.”

"What, you never had to bring a fresh liver to your Harvard fraternity?"

The scholarly brother rolled his eyes. At least Dean knew he was long accustomed to his jokes.

“Well,” Sam continued through a deep breath, “I suppose we should start with examining the places where the bodies were discovered. Then we should inquire with the local asylums and sanitariums about any escapes this past year. Maybe the workhouses and prisons around here too. I’m sure Castiel can direct us.”

Dean hummed his lazy agreement with the plan and stroked his lip between his thumb and first finger as he read a file for the second time. “What do you think of that man?” he inquired absently.

A shrug answered him. “I dunno. Typical rich fellow. No different than the fussy peacocks on Fifth Avenue. They just don’t have titles.”

"No," Dean disagreed. "He’s not like them. Didn’t you notice how plain his suit was and his disheveled hair?"

"I don’t particularly pay such close attention to gentlemen and their appearance, Dean," replied Sam after a bit of an uncomfortable silence. "If you say so, of course. You’d know better than I would in these things. Just … Dean … don’t. Not this one."

Laughingly, Dean’s indignant green eyes flashed up at his younger brother’s all too aware countenance. Sam knew a bit about that damaged part of him, the broken piece of his morality that never could quite commit to one woman - or one man, as it turned out. Living on the fringes of proper society, deemed sick and sinful, even though no one knew his secret, gave Dean the sort of recklessness that made him such a fearless copper and then a ruthless detective. His unusual tastes and restlessness never made him suitable for husbandry. He never deserved a good woman after living the life of such a killer, and then seeking the hard bodies of sea merchants and dock workers in early dawn hours. Dean was a man unto himself, easily turned by a pretty face and a large bosom as he was by taut shoulders and large, throbbing….

Knocking ripped Dean out of his thoughts and he jumped just as Sam hoisted himself to his feet. That woman in her black satin dress appeared with a rather large tray balanced in her arms and a much more relaxed, robust smile.

"Good evening," Mrs. Moore greeted much happier than she had earlier in the light of day. "I forgot to tell you that the kitchen is down in the cellar and you may eat anything you wish. Your rent includes foodstuffs. Since you've endured quite a journey, I thought I'd share my pot of beef stew with you tonight. I also brought ale and--" She stopped so abruptly at the sight of photographs of mutilated women scattered on the floor that she nearly tripped on her own boots.

Sam stepped in to the rescue and relieved her of the tray. "Please, don't be frightened. We're detectives."

"Oh," she replied, internally recovering her senses, "and His Grace must be financing a proper investigation of the Whitechapel murders."

"That'd be correct. You got any idea why he cares so much?" Dean questioned as he lifted his long frame off the floor. "I mean, didn't you ask any questions about the tenants he put here in your building?"

"Dean--"

He silenced Sam with a raised hand.

Mrs. Moore's presence stiffened again just the way she presented herself when they arrived that afternoon. Her hands clasped before her tightly corseted abdomen and Dean noticed her wedding ring as well as a signet ring on her right hand. A raven etched into the gold attracted his attention, matching a gold brooch at her throat displaying the same bird. It seemed odd for a lady to wear such a symbol of ill omens and death. Perhaps they belonged to her deceased husband, he reasoned.

"His Grace is not the sort of man to be questioned," she declared rather haughtily. "No man in his position is accustomed to being questioned, in fact. This is a difficult thing for democratic minds to understand, I know, but our aristocracy command the highest respect and reverence when it's truly deserved. His reputation in this country is above reproach. If he asks something of a person, there are reasons for it and it would be rude to question his motives."

"I see," Dean said, truly uncertain of how to read that woman.

"I apologize for my brother, Mrs. Moore," Sam attempted with a glare tossed Dean's way.

Just like that, her face brightened cheerfully once more as her eyes turned to Sam's lofty height. She gave him a gentle smile. "Think nothing of it, Mr. Winchester. Or shall I call you Detective Winchester?"

"Sam's fine," he offered. "Just call me Sam."

"Sam," she repeated, testing the feel of it on her tongue. "Then you may call me Jessie."

"That wouldn't be fitting. I'll compromise and call you Miss Jessie if it's all the same to you."

"Fine," she agreed with a sweeter smile and a nod. "Please enjoy your beef stew. There's plenty if you wish to warm up more tomorrow. I bid you good night then."

A closed mouth smile came to Sam, increasingly flustered by her but clearly trying to hide it. "Thank you, Miss Jessie. Good night."

"Good night, Sam." Her eyes turned to Dean and a wall appeared between them. "Good night, Detective Winchester."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not good with English accents in text, so please forgive me if any English dialogue sounds odd.

A bloated corpse heaved from the Thames smelled the same as it did having been heaved from the Hudson. The sticky odor clung to the back of Dean's throat. He pressed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, though it rarely masked the unpleasantness, and bent over the victim.

"Hard to tell," he said in the depths of concentration.

Sam leaned in beside him, ever fearless with the filth and gore in their profession, and held a photograph to the face. Even the morgue worker tilted his head for a different perspective of the body laid out on a cold slab. Gasses swelled the belly and limbs. Ashen skin melted off in places and took on a greenish tinge wherever it remained in tact. The puffy, battered condition of the face suggested the poor bastard met his end being beaten to death.

"I don't know. His hair is longer," Sam said.

"No, look." Dean pointed to a raised white line along the corpse's jaw. "The scar. It's right here in the photograph. This is the man."

Defeated, the younger brother's face fell and he righted his posture. "Damn," he whispered. "I thought maybe there was a chance this time."

"Pardon?" asked the morgue worker.

Dean's official tone rose above the private conversation. "You've got an escapee here. This is Everett Langley from the Stratford Hills Lunatic Asylum. He escaped a year ago. Return the body. Save the burial costs."

Without much of a farewell, and Dean and Sam turned and made their way toward the door. Frustration grip them by the throats all morning after that fourth body led them to another dead-end. Sam remained far more aware of social decorum than his older brother and put on a debonair air as he slid the file of photographs into his inner jacket pocket should any ladies outside see the wicked photographs.

The morgue worker followed them, his leather apron covered in dead human gore, and could not be bothered to hide his confusion for polite company. "Since when does Stratford Hills dispatch American detectives to search for escaped lunatics?" He darted ahead of them. "Gentlemen, wait."

"They don't," replied Dean abruptly. "We're looking for a murderer. We're tracking every escaped lunatic, convict, and workhouse boarder in the area for the last eighteen months. Lucky for Mr. Langley there, he's just been exonerated of slaughtering women of Whitechapel." He offered a charming smile and tipped his hat. "Good day to you."

Outside, Sam took the first opportunity to shove Dean with discreet force. "Was that necessary?"

"People get too interested," he retorted. "If they're gonna ask, I'm gonna tell them the truth. And if word gets back to the killer that the pressure's on, he might get nervous. Nervous killers get sloppy. Sloppy killers get caught and hanged."

"You've probably frightened that man for life."

"Sammy, he works in a morgue in one of the worst parts of London. I doubt anything could frighten him at this point." He flashed a smile and slapped his brother on the back of the shoulder. "C'mon. We've got time to have a look at the last murder scene before we dine with Lord and Lady Uptight this evening."

"The Earl and Countess of Rothes," Sam corrected with an eye roll. "And you're not wearing that ratty old suit to dinner."

*****

Only a dark, coppery brown smudge on the ground marked the place where Annie Chapman's life came to a violent conclusion. It took longer than they anticipated to find the place in the narrow, winding streets of Whitechapel, and not many people were willing to assist. Everyone knew them for strangers despite the tightly packed high population. Strangers, no matter the city, were always met with suspicion when such violent killers were on the loose.

It wasn't unlike New York, honestly. The accents fell sharper on the ear and even less refined than Five Points, and the fog struck Dean as unholy. But otherwise, it smelled the same and the people lived life in the same manner.

"I don't understand how nobody saw anything," Dean said as he jumped against the fence and peered into a back yard of someone's small house. "How is this happening around here without witnesses?"

"Well, there could be witnesses but they may not come forward," offered Sam as he crouched and flipped through his file.

"It's their own women being killed," replied Dean with a soured face.

The photograph Sam searched for appeared and he held it above the murder site. Her mutilated body lay lifeless in the grainy, sepia image. He worked through possible scenarios, turning each one over in his mind as he turned the photograph over her bold stain for different angles. Everything in Sam's nature worked like a scholar in such cases, while Dean operated from his tangible senses and instincts. In this case, the younger brother had to admit that the case was better suited for the analytical older brother to lead.

"They're fallen women, Dean. They're not upstanding citizens. People aren't so willing to stick their necks out for the great unwashed who sell their bodies. Most people probably don't even know what's happening here."

"Which is my point exactly. Why does Castiel care a pile of manure about this?" The detective leaned a shoulder on the fence and crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe he likes slumming it. He could have a couple of mud lilies over here and he doesn't want to see them hacked up. Could drag him kicking and screaming into a public scandal."

Skeptical, Sam peered up at Dean from the ground. "You're just trying to find reasons to make yourself detest this man, aren't you?"

"What are you talking about?" Overt ugliness came over Dean's countenance so Sam would have no reason to guess that he had actually hit the mark. Instead, Dean muttered, "I don't give a rat's ass about that man."

"I'm sure," Sam muttered right back, shaking his head. He repeated the warning issued the previous night. " _Not this one_ , Dean."

He heaved the most irritated sigh he could muster and shook his head at the buildings in the distance obscured by a layer of mucky fog in the air. Fists tightened around his ribs, uncertain of why the peculiar blue-eyed Earl of Rothes kept coming up in conversation. The wealthy louse probably  _did_ have something to do with the whole horrid mess and the blood spilled across Whitechapel could very well have his hand behind it. He only met the man for about a half hour but it left a mark on him, yet he couldn't discern whether the mark stung in pain or pleasure.

Dean didn't appreciate the direction his thoughts took and he shoved himself off the fence, throwing himself into the murder scene. "Sammy," he said in a secretive voice, "you gotta touch the ground."

"What?" He knew but he didn't want to do it.

"You know what I'm referring to, brother. We're not getting anywhere productive here," whispered Dean, eyes boring into Sam's face.

"No." Sharply, Sam shook his head. Golden brown hair fell into his eyes.

Dean grabbed his wrist. "We need assistance. I don't like it any more than you do--"

"--Yes, indeed. You're not the one who suffers with blinding headaches for days afterward," argued Sam, reluctant and defensive.

Pausing, Dean didn't release his wrist. "Other women will die."

Sam wrenched his arm and shook off Dean's grip. The disturbing suggestion meant touching Annie Chapman's blood stain for the purpose of touching the oddity in Sam. There existed an intrinsic ability to possess the persona of a soul not his own to witness the important events. He lacked control over the oddity, however. They both knew touching the poor woman's blood meant Sam could just as easily end up feeling what the killer felt as he could end up feeling what the victim felt. In his position, Dean didn't know which route he would prefer. Both seemed equally horrifying.

The younger Winchester glared at the older one for even suggesting it, yet Dean knew his brother well enough to wait out the initial offended emotions. Sam always did what was right for the victims even if it meant debilitating himself for days. His hazel eyes squeezed shut and his head lowered until the length of his shaggy hair obscured his face. Dean waited, recognizing the way Sam went inward to pull himself together.

"I hate you," mumbled Sam, surrendering to it.

"I know you do," Dean acknowledged.

Sam settled on his knees and gave Dean one last glance before he flattened his palms in the center of the blood stain. Stillness drooped his shoulders and smoothed his countenance, while Dean remained silent as to not break the connection. He hated making Sam use the oddity but they needed some direction in that foreign city.

Twitching jerked Sam's right hand. His fingers curled around an invisible object and, grunting wrathfully, he lunged forward with his eyes closed and made a blind slash at Dean, who leaped back on his haunches. It all happened so fast, leading him to believe the vibrations of the crime embedded in the cobblestone streets at a much stronger intensity than the ordinary. Sam's torso twisted to one side, flopped to the other as if beyond his control. He resembled a child's rag doll enduring the violence of being thrown back and forth between fighting children. And then his spine went rigid with his head limp over his neck. His eyes opened halfway, darkened and altogether not his own.

" _My lord and master thanks you for your sacrifice_ ," he muttered so gravelly and wicked that it couldn't possibly have been his own words. The ugliest chuckle rolled through his chest. His lips curled back in an amused sneer.

Abruptly then, whatever force took hold of Sam released him and he pitched forward like cables from his shoulders were cut. He collapsed face first onto the cobblestones despite Dean reaching out to try and grab him. Instantly, he cringed at his unconscious brother, knowing the incident likely earned him abrasions and a black eye. Dean grabbed him, knowing that stage of the process wouldn't last long.

Against the fence where Annie Chapman was killed, Dean waited for Sam to regain consciousness.

*****

"I need a drink," Sam slurred, hanging like a rag around Dean's shoulders. "I need food."   
  
"You said that," replied Dean. "I'm trying to find a tavern or someplace that doesn't look like the patrons are all collectively rotting with syphilis."   
  
Sam's rubbery legs struggled to hold up his body weight. He allowed Dean to drag him around the block and they took a slow ramble down the street apiece, but not without being propositioned by at least five prostitutes. They must have looked like targets. Mentally, he filed away the idea that he must interview as many as he could in the coming days, so he restricted himself from waving them off with rude comments.   
  
The brothers found a pub with a corner entrance that appeared well lit and busy. At least it seemed a bit cleaner than the others, and Sam was getting heavy, so Dean shouldered his way into the place. The painted wooden sign above the door read _Harvelle's_  and it had the looks of familiar taverns back home.   
  
"Here, Sammy. Take a load off." He dumped his brother onto a bar stool and bowed his spine, feeling the relief as his bones popped.   
  
A middle-aged woman, who probably passed for a golden brunette beauty in her youth, sauntered along the bar. "What ye'be drinkin', boys?" she asked in the harsher dialect Dean began to recognize as part of the lower class. But the woman was no prostitute. Her dark green dress may have been stained with difficult work but it buttoned to her throat, carried the weight of a proper bustle, and she kept her figure contained in a corset.   
  
"Just bring him, uh, strong ale, I suppose," Dean said only loud enough for her to hear him over the bar. "And a whiskey for me."   
  
"Oy, yer American?" Her brow arched.   
  
"New Yorker," he replied.   
  
"Well, ain't that somethin'. We don't get too many outsiders in our little piece of paradise," she said. Though friendly enough, she eyed them with a barely contained measure of skepticism. She poured drinks for them. "What're you doin' here anyhow?"   
  
Dean slumped onto the bar stool beside his groggy brother. "Murder investigation," he said without the strength to sugarcoat it.   
  
She froze and the mug of ale nearly spilled over. "The women here?"   
  
"Yes." He stuck out his hand. "Detective Dean Winchester. Know anything about the dead women?"   
  
All the sass in her bled away as she slid their drinks across the bar. She shook his hand. "Didn't know any of the girls meself but me daughter's young. Can't seem to get her outta this cesspool. She's gonna end up like the rest of 'em because she doesn't know a life outside of Whitechapel. That devil's gotta be stopped. Ya hear me, boys?"   
  
"Yes ma'am," replied Dean with a sharp nod.   
  
" _My lord and master thanks you for your sacrifice_ ," repeated Sam for a second time. Bitter laughter spilled from his mouth into his mug as he drank.   
  
"Sammy?"   
  
The woman squinted at Sam just as Dean did.   
  
"It's ritual, Dean," he said, finally speaking of what he witnessed in his vision. "Killer thinks he's doing it for the devil. Lucifer. Satan himself."   
  
The woman's eyes slid to Dean's face. "What's he talking about?"   
  
"Uh...." Dean's brain scrambled. "We're working on different theories. C'mon, Sammy. Let's get back to the, uh, to the flat."   
  
He slugged back the whole of his whiskey and grabbed his brother by the arm, only looking back to drop a few coins on the bar. He hadn't yet learned English currency and hoped it was enough, but it truthfully didn't matter as much as getting Sam back to bed to recover. Leaving Sam in bed for days also meant Dean would have to go to the dinner at the big house alone. He couldn't reject an invitation that wasn't exactly voluntary and he began regretting the way he pushed Sam into using his second sight like that.   
  
"Chaps," the woman shouted after them, "come back tomorrow 'round midday before I open up. I'm called Ellen Harvelle and you can speak to my daughter about the local girls."   


*****

Knocking on the door of her private rooms was the last thing Dean wanted to do. He waited, stiff and terribly uneasy there in a formal dinner suit. Pomade smoothed his hair and he resisted the urge to run his hand through it in that nervous habit of his. He thought he looked like a painted whore, honestly, but Sam mumbled about how great men like Castiel never attended dinner in old suits and spurs.   
  
The door flung open and Mrs. Moore's expression twisted the second she recognized him. "Yes, Detective?"   
  
"Evening, Mrs. Moore," he said. "My apologies for intruding on you after polite hours."   
  
She waved him off. "It's nothing. What do you need?"   
  
"My brother. He's ill. I'd sit with him tonight but I'm afraid I'm already late for another obligation. I don't think I can reject an invitation at this late stage from the Earl--"   
  
"--No, you mustn't," she agreed. "His Grace doesn't tolerate those who cannot keep their word. He doesn't comprehend it."   
  
"Right." Dean nodded but he again wondered just how she seemed to know that man on such intimate terms. "I wondered if you could be persuaded to watch over my brother just until I return. It shouldn't be too late. I don't think so anyway. He has a blinding headache and it's making him...." Rather than say it, his arm arched down from his mouth and mimicked the motion of vomit.   
  
Mrs. Moore agreed with an understanding nod. Her unusual profession was the only reason Dean felt even mildly willing to entrust Sam info her care. "Go on. I shall look after him until he's recovered."   
  
"Thank you." Dean let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding so tight. "Look, I know you're not fond of me but I appreciate this."   
  
"Well, Detective, I'm fond of your brother," she said pointedly. "Now go before His Grace must be kept waiting any longer."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexual content.

Golden flame light undulated over the walls and the ceiling in Sam's delirium. His consciousness scratched and clawless toward the surface but couldn't seem to move beyond the vice squeezing his skull. Groaning, his head rolled to the side and cool pillow fabric shocked his skin. If he stared too long at the shadows, they morphed into evil shapes. Men as tall as the ceiling and as black as a moonless night lurked about the room waiting for a weak moment.

"Shh. There now." Mrs. Moore's voice covered him like a quilt. She leaned over him and filled his field of vision with loose curly locks. Her hair smelled of lavender and he held onto that touch of reality. "Detective Winchester, I'm here. Look at my eyes. Let me see you in there. Tell me how you're feeling."

Sam licked his lips, willing himself to focus. She wore a dressing gown tightly fitted over her white nightgown. That must have been why her hair tumbled loosely around her shoulders and flowed down her torso. It was late enough that she should have been in bed. If she should have slept at that hour, then Dean should have been sitting at his bedside instead. Asking about it seemed too complicated for how he felt at that moment. Then he remembered Dean had been invited to dinner at the Earl's great manor. Another touch of reality brought Sam closer to the surface. He vaguely remembered how he ended up there in the next few moments. Using his other sight always made him violently ill and he'd touched the spot where one of the murder victims fell. The pieces slowly fell into place but Mrs. Moore still hovered over him like an angel.

"My head," he mumbled.

"Yes," her sweet voice replied quite knowingly. "Your brother informed me that you suffer from debilitating headaches. He asked me to watch over you whilst he's gone." She reached for a green bottle on the nightstand and showed it to him. "If you'll permit me, I believe this will give you some relief."

"Laudanum," Sam guessed.

"Only partly," she replied, pushing a blonde curl behind her ear. "I mix my own blend that is less severe than laudanum on its own. I disapprove of so much alcohol."

"You could be a doctor," he whispered with an attempted smile.

Mrs. Moore smiled back as she withdrew a spoon from her dressing gown pocket. Her eyes twinkled. It didn't appear that she received many compliments that impressed her, so she soaked up Sam's high opinion of her as if she starved for it. Bitterly brown liquid measured into the spoon from the rim of the green bottle under her careful eye. She put the bottle on the nightstand and stood, sliding her hand under Sam's head. Suddenly she was so close and his senses filled with that lavender soap. That closeness even disguised some of the bitter medication as it slid thickly down his throat. He endeavored not to react badly to the taste but there was no disguising even the smallest laudanum dose.

"Give it a few minutes," she murmured as she let his head down on the pillow again. "You should feel some relief soon."

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"Think nothing of it, Detective. I admire what you're doing here, searching for a fiendish murderer that my own police force cannot seem to locate. Looking after you through this illness is a duty I'm happy to perform."

Something within Sam ached with disappointment hearing those words. So she viewed her bedside vigil as her duty rather than a task to be performed from true care and concern. More than that, his very disappointment astonishment surprised him. Despite her beauty and tenacity, he gave her no more thought than any other lady he encountered each day in his work. Sam never considered himself a suitable choice for any lady and left the idle romances to his brother both in the saloons back home and the ship docks full of burly laborers. Dean made the rounds for both of them as well as a sister they never had. Yet Sam lay there in a rented bed above that gentle lady's apothecary watching the lamp light dance over the curve of her lips. Perhaps he was delirious with fever but he found himself inexplicably drawn to that young widow. Still, he was her duty. He stowed away his strange desires.

"You needn't stay if the hour is too late." It seemed like the right thing to do, giving her an escape.

"No, I'm quite content where I am," she countered. "I shall keep you company until your brother returns from the manor. No one should languish in their sickbed without a friendly face nearby."

"It's kind of you." Sam didn't know what else to say. He hadn't found himself in that position often in his life.

"Laudanum's taking hold." Mrs. Moore studied his face as her willowy soft hand fluttered around his hairline and down his cheek. "You're feverish. Do these illnesses happen often, Detective?"

"Somewhat," replied Sam, quickly deflecting the second sight that caused his headaches. "Didn't we agree, Miss Jessie, that you should call me Sam, not Detective? Please. We live in the same building. I doubt formalities are so necessary when no one will hear us." As soon as he said it, he realized how scandalous the insinuation sounded and he bit his tongue. He blamed the second sight fever. "Sam's my name."

A faint smile flickered over her mouth. "I suppose since you're viewing me undressed this way--" she tugged the dressing gown fastened about her slender waist, "--we must be beyond polite propriety."

"That's what I'm saying," he agreed with a hazy, drugged smile.

"As you wish, Sam," she said.

A hand draped over his brow and his eyes slipped shut, calmed by her attention. She examined the state of the fever but Sam felt comforted by her touch, tilting his face into her palm. The warmth enticed him and the fever made him far less reserved, though a fleeting sense of regret threatened when he recovered. It simply wasn't Sam's way to express interest in a lady. His work was his mistress. Never admitting his pull to Jessie Moore was safer and proper, yet he swore her thumb caressed his throbbing temple and lulled him into comfortable delirium.

Whispering slipped through his lips, confessing before he realized it rushed through the barriers in his brain. "You're beautiful like an angel."

"Oh no, I'm far from an angel." Mrs. Moore tipped forward in her chair as if sharing a confidence but her tone sounded like she talked to herself. "No, no. I'm not an angel. If only you knew what they were really like."

*****

The one saving grace of stuffy formal nonsense among people Dean didn't know was the abundance of cigars and liquor. He poured himself half a whiskey while the footman was occupied with another man, preferring to do things for himself.

The Earl--who wanted to be called Castiel--stood near the roaring fireplace with an untouched drink in his hand. He watched Dean's movements all evening, unabashedly so, and no one seemed the least bit surprised or uncomfortable by the open stares. No one except Dean himself even gave Castiel the slightest attention as if they knew the Earl enjoyed reigning magisterially over his evening gatherings without engaging too much. Dean could respect men of few words. He was one of them, in fact. But Castiel's sharp blue eyes tracked his movements so intricately that Dean felt it even when he turned his back.

A dull, uniformed man entered the library and announced, "Her Ladyship, the Countess of Rothes."

Dean flattened against a bookshelf, realizing he was in the way as a tiny brunette figure in deep blood red silk swept past him. Another lady followed close behind with cold black eyes and such a head of hair that he wondered if she wore a wig for a second. The second lady kept a respectful distance of three paces behind the Countess, suggesting that she was some sort of lady's maid or a lady-in-waiting. Dean never pretended to understand English aristocracy.

"Madam," greeted Castiel as he accepted the Countess' lacy gloved hand and kissed it. "I trust you're well."

"Good evening," she replied in such a smooth tone that her words slithered from her lips. A faint smile registered somewhere in her full face but she greeted her husband with the warmth of a casual friend.

Eyes narrowed, Dean observed their interaction as suspicion welled in his belly. He'd seen people like that in New York. Wealthy folks mostly--the ones who couldn't be bothered to come down to the precinct when they were robbed but instead insisted on personal visits from detectives like his brother and him. Those were the sort of people who never actually loved each other.

That explained why there were no children.

Apparently being ushered into the dining room for dinner was a great honor in manor houses like those, so when the Countess looped her hand around Dean's elbow, he wondered about the purpose of that evening. He assumed he'd been invited to join them as a last-minute social courtesy, yet there she stood at his side sporting a smile that slithered just like her speech. He asked himself the silent question of whether he was the centerpiece of the Earl and Countess' dinner party like a cornucopia of entertainment.

"My husband told me of your brother's illness. I was looking forward to meeting both of you tonight," she said conversationally. "Surely it isn't serious. We're hoping you'll soon discover the Whitechapel murderer."

"Oh, Sammy's gonna be fine, Countess." Dean realized how painfully American he sounded and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

She smirked. "You don't know my name, do you?"

"No, ma'am."

"Your Ladyship."

Dean squinted down at her. "Pardon?"

"It's customary to address a countess as Your Ladyship," she explained, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

"Oh. Sorry." Dean felt the tips of his ears burning with embarrassment. No, embarrassment wasn't the right word. He simply loathed so many social customs, his dinner suit choked him around the throat, and he'd rather have a shootout with smugglers than endure it.

The Countess, however, took his rough American attitude in stride and even seemed to enjoy it. "I think you must feel more at ease with given names, hm? We shall compromise with Lady Margaret."

"Lady Margaret," repeated Dean with a nod.

As he pulled out a chair for her, he noticed that she kept her hair arranged in a simple way, choosing instead to highlight the jewel tones of her attire. A woman like her always knew exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it, right down to the dark shadow of a lady-in-waiting trailing them so obediently. Dean glanced her way but she kept her eyes averted to the rug. He wondered if he was meant to pull out a chair for her as well but she behaved as if she wasn't to move without a flicker of a gaze or a word from her lady.

"How charming you are," Lady Margaret commented, her voice dropping to a smoky tone.

Dean couldn't tell if she was sincere or insulting. Nevertheless, he decided he loathed her and thoughts jumped instantly to wondering how someone like Castiel could have married her.

Taking a seat marked with a card on his plate, Dean realized they placed him at the center of the long table. Those beside the lady of the house were the most important guests. His mother taught him that, having given a few parties before she was killed. He certainly wasn't the highest ranked man at the table and the attention made him squirm.

"Detective Winchester, I do apologize for my neglect," Castiel said from the head of the table.

"Neglect, sir?" Hell, sir didn't feel like the right word.

"Yes. I'm not easily persuaded to give parties. That's more of my wife's area of expertise." As Castiel spoke, footmen materialized around them and set out bowls of soup before each person. "I failed to make introductions when you arrived."

Certainly, but he sure succeeded at staring at him for half an hour.

Castiel addressed the entire party then, completely oblivious to Dean's discomfort with the entire night. "Detective Winchester joins us from the island of Manhattan in America. He's a detective--highly successful at that--and he's come on my behalf to work on solving the Whitechapel murders. He partners with his brother, also a detective, but who was unfortunately taken down with illness this evening."

Discreet glances around the table showed highly placed gentlemen, and Lady Margaret, sipping their soup from spoons as they listened. Dean mimicked them. Creamy asparagus soothed his hunger and he allowed himself to relax a bit.

"You've taken on quite a case, Detective," commented a man with a humorous countenance and an odd accent.

"This gentleman is Lord Gabriel Horne of Australia, formerly of Sussex," explained Castiel. "Additionally, our guests include my father-in-law, Alistair, Earl of Carnarvon, and alongside him is Lord Balthazar of Paris, and cousins of mine, Michael, Baron of Holloway, and Raphael, Baron of Stratford. You, of course, know my wife, the Countess of Rothes, and her lady-in-waiting, Lady Ruby Fenton. You will likely see many of these faces in my home as you come and go in your investigation."

With a courteous nod to each of them, Dean considered keeping a scrap of paper in his pocket just to keep track of their names. They generally greeted him politely, some even warmly, like Gabriel, yet the way Alistair eyed everyone could freeze the cream of asparagus soup dwindling in each bowl.

"Tell us, Detective," the one identified as Balthazar began, "how goes your investigation? I trust you're putting Castiel's money to good use."

"Oh honestly, Balthazar, speaking of money at the dinner table is so very ... low rent," retorted Lady Margaret. She seethed into her wineglass and exchanged bemused glances with Lady Ruby.

Dean ignored her dig at his background. "I can't speak of specifics, of course, but we're reaching out to the Whitechapel citizens little by little. In my experience, folks are willing to talk about what they know if you just treat them with a little dignity even if they are ... low rent." Trading quips with his employer's wife probably wasn't the best idea but the snobby little woman deserved it.

"That's how you plan to suss out this fiend? Talking?" said Balthazar.

"No," Dean replied with quite a deliberate syllable. "Investigations in poorer communities like these require approaches from multiple angles. While my brother and I investigate more  _official_  possibilities, letting the citizenry know we're around may, for example, dissuade the killer from striking again or give witnesses a sense of truly assisting if they decide to come forward with information. We may search all of the asylums and prison escapes under the sun, but if the people aren't keeping their eyes open too, we won't succeed."

"If you dissuade the murderer from his trade," Alistair said with Lady Margaret's smoky, slithering tone, "then you won't catch him red handed, as they say, now will you?"

"A mind as damaged as a this type of murderer is, he won't be dissuaded long. He's driven to it," Dean said, hoping to conceal the awful chill Alistair gave him. "As much as we believe this criminal must be hunted, our priority is preventing more needless bloodshed. Wouldn't you think so?"

"Of course." The old man's long, sunken features elevated with a deep rumbling chuckle as if Dean's desire to preserve life truly amused him.

"Father...." A bubbling, short burst of laughter caught Lady Margaret by surprise and she clapped a linen napkin over her lips. Indeed, father and daughter came with deeply disturbing presences that kept Dean on his best guard.

Despite thinly veiled goading from the other dinner guests, a few appeared to honestly welcome his views. Castiel chief among them. Though the one identified as Michael never spoke, he took in Dean's presence the way a man studied something new and interesting. The silent guest's countenance struck Dean as belonging to someone highly intelligent and emotionally sensitive. In some ways, he brought Sam to the surface in his thoughts, or perhaps even their father in the years before their mother was killed.

Dinner passed rather uneventfully, aside from Castiel oddly only pretending to eat and no one thinking strange of it. They stuffed themselves with a course of poached salmon in lemon sauce after the cream of asparagus soup. Then came more intense blue-eyed staring across the table during the course of lamb cutlets on a bed of fluffy potatoes, as well as the course of steamed autumn vegetables. Dean was quite full by that point but a dessert course arrived of apples baked in brown sugar and molasses, which, of course, he couldn't resist. The amount of wine wealthy people consumed with each round of dinner astonished him too in both the waste of resources that could feed poorer people and the blatant drunkenness among some of them. Aristocrats were a different breed of drunk than his usual obnoxious, loud saloon patrons and whorehouse clientele.

American women quickly excused themselves after dinner to play cards or music after dinner and it seemed English women were no different. Dean barely noticed Lady Margaret and Lady Ruby disappear with the decanter of dessert wine once the last baked apple was consumed.

Men adjourned to the library for cigars and more liquor without the slightest thought for the ladies, which left Dean a bit uncomfortable. He enjoyed ladies even if they were silent like Lady Ruby or ruthless like Lady Margaret. If he drank any more too, he would soon lose control over his manners.

"Hello, Detective," murmured Castiel with a certain discretion, catching Dean alone in the great hall on their way to the library.

Dean's eyes flickered over the Earl's height, standing rather close as if he held no regard for personal space. He smelled faintly clean like the earth soaking in fresh rain. Careless stubble accentuated his sturdy jawline by the light of gas lamps and mirrored candle sconces scattered along the papered walls. Suddenly Sam's admonishments came to mind, asking Dean so innocently.... _Not that one. Leave him be...._ Averting his eyes, Dean swallowed and stiffened his posture.

"I wondered if you'd join me in my office. I have information that may be of use to your investigation." Castiel's voice nearly vibrated the space between them in its gravelly monotone, yet Dean couldn't discern whether he was simply awkward or actually engaging in flirtation.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you think might help," Dean replied in equal measures of discretion and nonchalance.

Nodding, Castiel bit his lower lip from the inside but Dean wasn't meant to see that. "Wonderful. I believe you remember where to find my office. I must see to my guests for just a moment."

Dean agreed and Castiel seemed to disappear in a heartbeat. He let out a breath, not realizing he'd been holding it, and took a glass--full whiskey that time--as he wandered upstairs. The manor house spilled on forever but he retraced the path they took just a few days before toward Castiel's private office.

Unoccupied rooms begged to have a look but Dean respected the Earl's privacy. As he strolled along, however, a soft, airy sound emerged from one of the corner rooms. Then it happened again. It sounded like a lady in pain and, Dean being the protector and law enforcement that he was, he followed the mysterious sounds. The sight he found through the cracked door of that corner room nearly made him drop his drink and waste top shelf whiskey all over a richly woven rug.

No, they didn't intend to be found.

Wrists bound high over her head. A full height of naked feminine flesh stretched from the bedpost to the bare feet on the floor. Breasts high and full with dusky rose peaks stood erect as if reaching out to the other person in the room. Cold black eyes sought that other person in a hazy trance, her mouth open and slack with lust.

Dean took a step back. So Lady Ruby was having some torrid, sinful affair with one of the guest. A lot of women did a lot of things they'd never admit to in the light of day and he certainly had no room to judge.

But then, through the cracked door, he watched another female hand lead the tip of a horse whip along the dips and curves of Lady Ruby's body. She trembled, not of fear but a need for more, especially as the other feminine hand dragged the horse whip over her damp, fleshy mound shrouded by a dark triangle of hair. Lady Ruby moaned outright then, punching breath straight out of Dean's lungs. He had to leave. Soon Castiel would come along and he would certainly get kicked out of the great manor house, full of skeletons and secrets as it was.

Lady Margaret, fully clothed with the exception of her garnet red bodice opened and exposing her small breasts, strolled closer to her captive. The two of them disappeared after dessert so quickly, yet nothing remotely like that occurred to Dean. The Countess of Rothes snatched her lady-in-waiting's chin and plunged into her mouth with such a wet, authoritative kiss that Dean actually stumbled backwards. Just as he turned to run, Lady Margaret reached down, roughly stroking her lady's sex and eliciting the most sinful moans. It seemed that Countess had no interest in her own body but thoroughly relished in her plaything dangling from the bedpost.

Under other circumstances, Dean would have found a way to worm his way in on the festivities but Lady Margaret frankly repulsed him and he simply wasn't interested in women at the moment. Castiel's calm, earthy scent still clung to his formal dinner suit as he bolted from the scene and he suddenly hated himself for witnessing something potentially painful to the Earl. Shining black shoes pounded the floorboards, propelling him toward the safety of that private office.

Dean slammed the door behind him, panting hard.

Damn it.

He worried more about that truth wounding Castiel than he worried about getting discharged from the Whitechapel investigation.


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you absolutely sure it was the Countess and her lady-in-waiting?" Sam asked for the fourth instance since they arrived at Harvelle's.

Dean nodded over the rim of his mug. "They were the only two ladies at the dinner party and then they disappeared soon after the meal ended." He swirled heavy dark ale through his mouth as the filthy images replayed in his mind--a bit unwelcome at that. "Ordinarily, I would've ... stayed ... but I dunno, Sammy. There was something wrong about it, which is strange, because I've seen women together. That doesn't shock me anymore. But there's just something wrong with that woman."

"Which one?" Sam asked considerately.

"The Countess. But the lady-in-waiting too. She acts like a ... slave," he replied, struggling to find the right words. "It's just so wrong. All of it. And how does Lord Blue Eyes not know what's going on right under his own roof?"

"Maybe he does know. Rich folks are strange about their marriages," proposed Sam with a sideways glance. He paused, watching Dean. "Lord Blue Eyes, huh? Oh geez. You fancy him."

"How's that pretty blonde widow treating you, Sammy?" Dean shot back. If Sam wanted to insinuate things, so could he just the same. "Anyway, Castiel suggested we interview these names." He slid a scrap of paper across the table. "He got 'em from the paper. Reporters are tracking down people faster than the police apparently. I thought about going to talk to the police here myself but he got defensive. He forbade it."

Immediately, Sam's brow arched. "He forbade it?"

"You heard me," Dean replied, shrugging and popping nuts into his mouth.

"What the hell?"

"I know."

"'Ello, boys. Good t'see ya again," greeted Ellen Harvelle as she sashayed toward their table. "Yer late though. Don't y'have watches in New York?"

Her maternal tone prickled Dean's spine and his posture straightened. The brothers stood, greeting her with polite nods. "Sorry, ma'am," Dean apologized quickly.

"It's my fault," offered Sam. "I was rather ill during the night and I'm hobbling around blind today."

Mrs. Harvelle gave Sam a studious once over that lingered on the edge of suspicion, but Dean suspected she looked at everyone that way. He understood it and he even found himself wanting to earn her respect the way other women hadn't pushed him in the past. Apparently satisfied that Sam told the truth, she gave a short, abrupt not and clapped his shoulder as if telling him to sit down before he collapsed. Dean knew his brother still felt terrible but Sam never enjoyed people acknowledging his physical weaknesses. He nodded back, the wordless communication building the bridge a little more between them, but he sank into the old wooden chair.

"Looks like yer needin' a bit o'brandy for that illness. Yer gonna need my daughter too. I'll be back." Sweeping bustles took the tavern woman away before the Winchester brothers could question her.

Dean craned his head around and and found the tavern matron without effort as she ascended a stairwell along the back wall. A railed balcony of sorts wound around an open second floor with uniformed doors so frequent in spacing that Dean realized Ellen Harvelle not only owned a tavern but a low-rent brothel too.

"You ever wonder how people like her end up in places like this?" Sam asked discreetly.

"We're all just a few dollars from destitution, Sammy. Folks can either wallow in street filth or learn to do for themselves." When she disappeared into one of the nondescript upper rooms, Dean turned back to his brother and swallowed more ale. "You think this daughter of hers is walking the streets too? I mean, look up there. We both know what's going on in those little rooms."

"Could explain why she might be acquainted with the victims," Sam said.

"M-hmm," he agreed noncommittally.

Tavern bustle picked up in the time it took for Mrs. Harvelle to retrieve her daughter as if all the laborers in the district spent their morning wages on liquor and vice. A rather petite figure cut downstairs through the crowd much like a younger, sweeter version of her mother. Blonde hair pinned at the crown of her head added to the angelic aura, but as she drew nearer, Dean noticed her grape colored dress lacked a bustle and she lifted her heavy skirt to walk faster. Exposing her black boots never fazed her and Dean knew immediately that she was a difficult girl to handle, like a mare that needed a tighter bridle.

"Gents, this is my daughter, Jo. Anything you ask her, you can ask in my presence." Mrs. Harvelle left little room for argument in her tone. Presenting her daughter seemed an awful lot like presenting a chained lion.

The girl's thin lips formed a restrained smile as she stuck out her hand like a man. "Pleased to know ya," she said. "My mum says yer detectives from America. Are ya really here just for the killer loose among our people?"

"That we are, ma'am," Sam replied with his professional charm but she seemed more interested in hearing from Dean. "This is my brother, Dean, and I'm Sam. Shall we sit?"

"'Ello, Detective Sam." With a cheeky grin, she shook his hand. "And Detective Dean." A hint of blackness flushed her pupils wider and her grin went a bit lopsided as she shook Dean's hand.

Without waiting for one of them to help, she seated herself between the brothers at the round tavern table with her mother perched across from her. Ellen looked ready to pounce should the slightest affront occur. It settled in Dean's mind that he should let Sam take the lead in questioning her since he had a better handle on polite conversation that wouldn't upset mothers of pretty young daughters intent on rebellion.

"Miss Jo, what do you know about the recent rash of murders?" began Sam.

"I know a chap's gotten it into his head to cut down the lives of women of the night simply trying to survive like anyone else. I also know the papers and the Mayfair set don't care a fig about our girls. They're only looking to protect their side of town from this chap hunting down their cast-iron virgins," spouted Jo with her nose turned to the air. If anyone held prejudices against the impoverished, she certainly held prejudices against the affluent.

Sam scribbled in a leather notepad, giving a sincere impression. "Yes, I see. And are you certain the assailant is male?"

Jo blinked as if Sam asked her if the sky was blue. "Have you seen the bodies, sir?"

"Have you?" he asked without giving her a second to think about what she said. His hazel eyes focused on applying pressure to her mind.

Immediately, the young lady sobered. Her eyes dropped to the fingers winding around each other in her lap. "I knew Annie Chapman quite well. I nursed her through just a month past when her man took an angry fist to her."

Brothers exchanged quick looks over the table. A barmaid brought Sam a brandy but it went untouched. He treaded carefully. "Her man, you say?"

"Aye," Jo replied. "Her man, Harry, knocked her around a wee bit when they got to drinkin'. Street folks heard it told she got into wrathful discourse with Eliza Cooper over at Crossingham's over a bar of soap. Can ya believe anything so ridiculous? Annie told me herself, she did, that the bruises were from Harry in his drinkin' fit. He was loathed to know she walked the streets to pay for lodging but he never lifted a manly finger to help her. The lot of you men are to blame for the plight of women, y'know."

Swallowing back a sarcastic remark, Dean picked up the question. "What's Crossingham's?"

"Lodging house at 35 Dorset," replied Jo, softer then, taken in by his intrusion.

"Do you think this Harry could be the assailant?" Sam probed.

Jo hardened up again with her attention drawn away from Dean. He recognized it. She liked him on sight, as many young girls her age did, and he filed it away to use later if it became necessary.

"Harry's barely clever enough to wipe down at bar," interjected Mrs. Harvelle. "He didn't do this awful deed."

"I heard it told that Eliza Cooper bought Annie's ring and bracelet from the pawnbroker 'round the corner after she was planted in the ground though," Jo volunteered but turned it into a request. "Go and ask Tom Cooper about those things. He's the pawnbroker."

"Are they kin?" Dean asked. It sounded like a solid lead.

"Ol' Tom's her brother. Much older. He was born of Old Man Cooper's first wife."

Another silent communication passed between Sam and Dean over the table. One nodded to the other. Nothing slipped past the women between them, but they kept quiet rather than our themselves at risk even more by dealing with law enforcement. Dean knew how people of their class operated. Where the police were seen as an asset of protection by the affluent, they were polarized into a threatening presence by the impoverished and working classes. Coppers were not to be trusted.

"Thank you for taking the time to talk with us," said Sam as he slapped his leather notepad shut. "May we see you again if we have more questions?"

"Don't see why not," Jo replied with a shrug.

"You think you boys can catch this murderer?" asked Mrs. Harvelle.

Dean nodded as he emptied his pocket of money onto the table. "We're certainly trying, ma'am. If he's still in the city, we'll weasel him out of whatever putrid hole he calls home."

Weaving through crowded city streets didn't stop Dean from noticing the way Sam smirked at the pavement. "What's funny?"

"The girl fancies you," Sam replied nonchalantly.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Hell, Sammy, she's just a kid."

"Who has a very adult profession."

"That's not her fault or her choice," he argued.

Shrugging, Sam gave his walking stick a casual flip as they strolled. "How do you know it's not her choice? Who's to say a woman couldn't use her independence to earn a living? Granted, it's not an ideal situation what with social diseases, childbirth, and so on, but is anyone really forcing her into it?"

"But does anyone care enough about these women to improve their welfare? Look at all these dirty children running around without enough food in their bellies. How many of their fathers are drunkards beating their mothers every night?" Dean's voice dropped as if it even mattered an ocean away from home. "How many of these men are like Father? When it's a choice between drunken husbands and walking the streets, is it really a choice, Sammy? Or are these unfortunates choosing between the lesser of two evils?" He shook his head and spat on the ground. "Five Points or Whitechapel, polite society ignoring the destitute is the same everywhere."

The silence told Dean all he needed to know. Sam had no proper response to an argument of truth. He tended to see the good in everyone and live with the hope that people could claw their way out of poverty if they tried hard enough. Dean considered himself the more realistic brother. The world was dirty and ugly, and many of the people in it were just as dirty and ugly.

"I think this is it," Sam said, nodding to a corner building with a simple wooden sign over the sidewalk.

As the younger brother checked out the pawn shop through the window, Dean sauntered around the corner to have a look at the four-way intersection. Pedestrian, buggy, wagon, and cart traffic gave Cooper Pawn quite a bit of customer activity, which seemed odd to him. Murderers selling off the possessions of their victims always went to places out of the way, hidden by larger businesses to lessen the chances of being discovered. On the other hand, he reasoned, nothing in that part of London could be deemed out of the way or easily hidden.

A team of horses whinnied down the street, drawing his attention to a closed black coach with glass windows. People walking by pointed and gossiped at the hulking thing parked in front of a narrow building in a row of half a dozen other narrow buildings. It was out of place, something that opulent in the lower rung of town.

"You coming?" called out Sam.

"Just a minute," Dean replied with a finger raised.

There they emerged--Lady Margaret and the lady-in-waiting falling a few paces behind. She glanced back into the doorway as she tugged black leather gloves over her hands and straightened the black bonnet tied with a satin ribbon under her chin. The lady-in-waiting carried a brown paper wrapped parcel and nodded to someone in the building as Lady Margaret traipsed down the front stoop to her waiting coach. Though both women wore black, the amount of fur and jewelry accenting their richly tailored dresses indicated a clear lack of mourning. Dean felt Sam fall in at his side as the pedestrian traffic thickened, further concealing them from the coach down the road. The driver snapped a horse whip and the great vehicle lurched into motion. People unaccustomed to those horse teams on their narrow streets leaped out of the way but pointed and stared just the same.

A third lady appeared on the stoop watching the coach pull away. Black velvet and satin made up her clothing as well, striking Dean like the uniform of a secret society. His eyes narrowed and he memorized her tall, lean figure. Pouting red lips and black-lined blue eyes were clearly artificially enhanced with rogue and charcoal. He'd seen highly placed prostitutes in New York highlight their features that way too, a technique borrowed from stage actresses. Bright ruby hair swept up to the crown of her head in a complicated twisting style straight out of a fashion plate. Her pale eyes darkened toward the distant coach for a moment, and then she retreated indoors again.

Sam's brows knitted together, dumbfounded. "Was that--"

"--Lady Margaret." Nodding grimly, Dean's stomach unsettled.

"What's she doing in this part of town?" came Sam's rhetorical question.

"Consorting with brothel madames, I guess," Dean replied darkly as he straightened the rounded bowler hat perched slightly to one side on his head. "You question the pawnbroker. Buy something and get on his good side. I'm gonna check out that place."

"Right," agreed Sam. "You armed?"

Dean lifted his jacket enough to show Sam his holster. "Always. You?"

"Yup." His younger brother mimicked the display.

"Meet me back at the Widow Moore's. Shouldn't be seen together 'round here too much," he ordered at the last second, headed across the street.

Dean adopted a casual gait as he strolled toward the narrow building among so many others just like it. He twirled his walking stick once or twice the way his brother did when he let down his guard. Few people even noticed him since he wore his own suit from home rather than something new sent over in a trunk of clothes from the Earl of Rothes. Folks were folks no matter what side of the Atlantic and he knew blending in would make them tell the truth in witness questioning much faster than being approached by a man of his large size in fast clothes.

Just as Dean suspected, the place was a higher class brothel on the edge of the worst part of town. He peered further down the street, standing on the front stoop, and noticed bigger, happier looking homes down the hill. One direction--fog and poverty. The other direction--blue skies and more food than they could eat. The brothel straddled the edge of Heaven and Hell.

He strolled indoors like any other man arriving to a public house seeking afternoon delights. An immediate thick cloud of sweet, spicy perfumed air hit him the moment he closed the door as if the Catholic church manufactured incense in the root cellar.

"Good afternoon, sir," greeted another lady swathed in black. The gas chandelier hanging in the foyer gave her a harsh appearance with such ivory skin contained in heavy black fabrics. "Allow me to take your hat and cane. My name is Cecily. May I have your name, please?"

"Um," he scrambled internally, "George Root."

Miss Cecily opened a leger on her desk and scanned the entries. "Is Madame Abaddon expecting you, Mr. Root?"

That must have been the unnatural redhead. "No, but I wasn't aware an appointment was required."

The woman smiled indulgently but something about her cold eyes left Dean unnerved. Dark hair framed her gold-rimmed spectacles. "She doesn't require an appointment, sir, but we always check for those with, shall we say, special accommodations."

"I see." He nodded, shuffling just slightly to give the impression of shyness.

Dean found himself swept deeper into the brothel as Miss Cecily brought him into a parlor facing the street. He noticed through another doorway that the house went on much further to the back than it did in width. A standing piano blocked his view through the next room though. He strolled a slow, curious circle around the plushly decorated parlor and admired yet another bright gaslit chandelier hanging as the centerpiece of the room. Of course, he'd been through every type of brothel back in New York but pretending that the experience was new allowed him to poke around a little more.

"May I offer you a drink whilst you wait, Mr. Root?" asked Cecily with all the professional charm of her position.

"Kentucky bourbon if you've got it," he said absently.

"Indeed, we do. Longing for a taste of home, hm?"

Dean smiled flirtatiously. "Is it that obvious?"

"It's not every day that we receive American gentlemen," she replied, returning the flirtation. "I shall alert Madame Abaddon that you're here."

Once Miss Cecily left the parlor, Dean realized he already stood out too much by being American. He sighed.

Nothing out of the ordinary decorated the room until he noticed a basket on the floor tucked neatly beside a chaise lounge. He stooped over the basket and his jaw fell open, recognizing the same type of restraints Lady Margaret had used on Lady Ruby, her lady-in-waiting. Bare breasts, engorged dark pink nipples, and swollen, bitten lips flashed through his mind, and then rested on the restraints that had bound her wrists to the bedpost. His index finger poked through the basket, not wanting to touch more than he had to, but yes, there, he found a series of paddles and horse whips like the one Lady Margaret had used.

Other women in the city lived that way, it seemed. Dean shot to his feet and turned his back to the sexual implements, confused and uncertain. Before, he would have found it all titillating and, honestly, quite arousing, but those things were happening behind Castiel's back. He pieced it together quickly. A number of society women probably formed a secret order where they could play sadistic games with each other and, as Dean's eyes plucked out more hints in the room, he understood that he'd just stumbled into the beehive. Castiel's wife caring so little for him truly ate away at Dean and he found himself utterly unable to enjoy the gem of sinful delight going on in the building around him. Women probably occupied rooms as he thought about it there, in the floors above his head, using each other and poor chaps like him for their selfish pleasures. It should have won his interest. Why was he so repulsed?

"Ah, good afternoon. Mr. Root, is it?" greeted the redhead up close and personal.

"Yes." Dean cleared his throat and tried again with a smile. "Yes, I'm George Root. Pleasure to meet you."

"And you," Madame Abaddon replied. Her eyes flickered over his body as if openly appraising him without shame. And when she offered her hand, he had to kiss it. "Are you seeking company for the night, Mr. Root? I boast the finest range of tastes in London if I may say so. I keep ladies of all varieties from the Continent and beyond." With a cheeky, lopsided grin, she leaned in and whispered. "Or young men if that's your palate, sir. I provide anything you might require. Anything at all."

Young men. Hmm. Temptation wrestled with his need to investigate. The corner of Dean's mouth lifted and he winked. Her lips parted slightly and her chin lifted along with her arched brow, understanding that she hit a nail on the head.

"This is a fine establishment, Madame Abaddon," he stalled with conversation. "What made you build your business here?"

"Location is everything, is it not?" A graceful hand led them to a sofa and she swept aside her impressive bustle to sit beside him. "Most of my clientele comes from areas of society that frown upon anything unconventional. I'm close enough to the right people to make them feel safe as they venture close to the filth and fog of Whitechapel. They're unlikely to be recognized here."

"I see," Dean replied with a nod. "But of course, I recognized the Countess of Rothes on my walk here."

Madame Abaddon never could truly smile. Instead, her lips tilted crooked and faint laughter tittered from her throat. "Yes, I'm afraid Lady Margaret has an aversion to hiring public carriages for better discretion. Her father is quite powerful, which gives her a sense of invincibility. I warn her all the time about being too flippant and open with her dissipated habits, but she feels entitled to live as she pleases. Ladies like her aren't accustomed to being refused any whim."

"You speak of her with a great deal of familiarity," Dean pointed out.

"Oh, yes." The redheaded lady shrugged softly. "I've known Lady Margaret my entire life."

"Is that so?" Then it was his turn to arch a brow. "You're a brothel madame and you're on lifelong familiar terms with a Countess? This isn't something we'd often see in New York."

"Nor here, Mr. Root." Her head tilted the way ladies playing games with secrets did. "You could say we're related. We come from the same place and we both have jobs to do here, which is true for Lady Ruby as well."

"And others?" he probed.

Madame Abaddon's eyes sharpened on him. "What makes you say that?"

"I noticed you all dress alike. Black velvet, satin, furs, and gold jewelry." Dean spoke in his most nonthreatening tone and hoped to pass it off as idle conversation. "Kinda like a secret society."

Again, that tight, tittering laughter as if Madame Abaddon found it amusing when he got too close to something--something but he didn't know what yet. "How observant you are, Mr. Root," she replied in a purring tone as she leaned forward secretly. "Now, shall we discuss what sort of boy you might enjoy?"

Dean should have gone back to the flat. He knew it. But he told himself that buying a companion might give him deeper access to that strange brothel. "Have you got any with dark hair and blue eyes?"

The light caressed her pale green eyes as her gaze turned playful. "I have two," she teased.

Hmm. Sam wouldn't miss Dean for an hour or two, right?


	6. Chapter 6

Dean wandered alone around the flat over the apothecary. Gaslights twitched shadows over ghoulish photographs, autopsy reports, and newspaper clippings on the floor. Sometimes strolling from above gave him a new perspective and a better chance at seeing the missing puzzle pieces to any crime. The fireplace blazed between the two bedroom doors, one of which contained Sam under Mrs. Moore's care--quite ill once again. But the case still needed attention. Dean couldn't succumb to worrying all night about his little brother when they had a job to do.

He turned and pressed fingers to his lips, trying out the facts from his left side. Two victims the newspapers connected to the Whitechapel murderer: Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman. Other victims not connected by the newspapers stuck out to Dean with the hallmarks of their killer though. Fairy Fay, Annie Millwood, Ada Wilson, Emma Smith, and Martha Tabrum were no more. Crouching, Dean studied what likenesses he had, trying to will some connection between them. The killer certainly had a taste for fallen women, but beyond that, it seemed random. Chasing down Annie Chapman's friends and enemies didn't pan out, considering there were no connections to the other victims.

The door to Sam's room opened and closed, letting Mrs. Moore slip through. Though she clutched a black shawl around her shoulders and melded with the night's shadows, her eyes burned of anger as she boomed down over Dean.

"He's ill again, just as he was last night. What have you done to him?" she demanded in a hissing whisper.

"I--"

"--He can scarcely lift his head from his pillow!--"

"--Mrs. Moore--"

"--Listen to me, Detective," she hissed right over him. "Your brother's headaches are far more serious than minor discomfort. He cannot bear noise right now. Do not take him back to the fog and filth of Whitechapel for at least a week or you must answer to me."

Amused, Dean shifted his stance and folded his arms over his chest. "You really don't like me, do you, Mrs. Moore?"

"Not particularly, no." His directness appeared to take her aback, at first confused, but then noticeably more at ease. "I don't enjoy seeing Sam in bed more often than he's on his feet because he's following you all over London chasing a murderer. His health is far more precarious than yours and should be given more consideration."

"Are you sweet on my brother?" he asked playfully.

The horror on her face told him everything he needed to know. "You're being very rude, sir!"

"I'll leave you to it then," chuckled Dean, stepping over his files and photographs scattered on the floor. "I'm out for a walk. You know, to give Sam the quiet you say he needs so badly." He put on his bowler hat and tipped it at a charming angle. "Good night to you, Mrs. Moore."

Dean thought getting some air would revive his brain anyway. If he didn't finesse the situation a bit, Sam and the spirited blonde would never get beyond polite interaction. His brother had always been that way. So Dean left the apothecary building and hoped the Florence Nightingale relationship would blossom into more over time. It certainly wouldn't happen that night, of course. Sam was far too much of a gentleman to flirt his way into her skirt, which Dean could have accomplished quickly if he actually liked that lady. His brother was the one with the moral backbone in the family.

Thoughts inevitably reverted back to the unsolved case, as they always did for him. Dean's mind never truly closed any case so long as a murder walked free among innocent, decent people. He possessed the uncanny ability to recall facts and figures from years past that not even victims' families remembered after the grief faded into numb reminiscences.

Whitechapel opened itself before his mind's eye. Streets running with sewage and trash along badly maintained drainage lines. Soot breathed into healthy pink lungs turned the porous organs into hardened black bits of useless flesh blocking any healthy air, if such a thing was to be had in that region.

Above all, the darkness and the fog acted as a barrier encasing the poor wretches in their filthy section without hope of breaking free to the brighter, more open side of London. The darkness stuck out in Dean's mind the more he thought of that place. Darkness in Whitechapel seemed more potent than darkness in Five Points. At least at home, streetlamps stood with more numerous frequency. He suspected a body could stand in a pitch black alley where Annie Chapman and the other victims were killed and the gruesome work could be done without a single witness. That, to him, provided at least one theory to investigate since they had no witnesses who actually set eyes upon the assailant. He wanted to investigate the murder locations again, and question those who lived in those places. They had to be missing some vital piece.

A dog barked at his boots strolling along the pavement. He looked up from his mental investigation and, some distance down the road, a small white dog bounced against an elegant wroght iron fence. Whether the little yappy creature wanted a good belly rub or he wanted to eat Dean's face off, he didn't know. The gumption of that little thing amused him nonetheless, reminding him of Mrs. Moore guarding his brother's sickbed at that very moment.

"Hello, Detective."

Dean spun on his heels and flung back his jacket, groping the empty air for a revolver he'd forgotten in the flat. An empty holster was a careless mistake but so was not recognizing Castiel's voice floating on the breeze from an interior garden swing. He approached the gate and realized his midnight stroll unconsciously brought him to the Earl of Rothes' city home. Embarrassed and endlessly confused about how he got there, Dean turned again and peered back and forth down the desserted street. Of course, it was too late to escape. Castiel had seen him and also saw that Dean knew it.

"Do come in," Castiel offered calmly as he closed his book and, taking his lantern by the handle, came to open the garden gate.

"I, uh, I...." he stammered, rubbing the heels of his hands over his trouser pockets.

"You what?" Even in the darkness of a London night, the blueness of Castiel's eyes appeared to glow like fire set to liquor.

Dean steadied himself. "I was just out for a walk."

"And so you found your way here."

Was the Earl smiling? Perhaps faintly. Or perhaps the darkness played tricks on Dean's mind. He thought of the poor, wretched fallen women dead in the ground and how they must have thought the blade a trick of the darkness in their last moments. He stepped into the garden, always keeping an eye fixed on Castiel as he latched the gate behind them. He didn't know why that man in a crumpled suit more expensive than rented rooms at home intimidated him so much.

"Why are you reading a book out here? London's cold in mid-September," Dean said, making an attempt at conversation.

Castiel led him through a winding stone walkway amid fragrant flowers slowly wilting away into winter slumber. "The cold doesn't bother me," he replied. "Have you ever taken in the grandeur of the heavens by night, Detective? A great deal can be learned from the stars and the moon."

"You sound like a dreamer, sir," said Dean as he followed Castiel into a part of the mansion he hadn't yet seen. They descended below stairs.

A light, amused laugh lifted Castiel's face. "I'm an idealist."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No. A dreamer waxes tragic poetry and mourns the loss of a beautiful world. An idealist has the wider vision and courage to fight for it," he explained.

"And," replied Dean, his curiosity possessing his tongue, "does your wife feel this way about the fight for a beautiful world?"

Saying nothing, Castiel pushed open a set of wooden double doors. A vast kitchen with a blazing hearth and copper pots and pans hanging overhead emerged through the doors, yet not a single cook or scullery maid rushed about the place. "You haven't eaten today, Detective. Please." Castiel turned an open hand to the rustic kitchen table surrounded by equally rustic chairs. He behaved as if Dean never spoke of Lady Margaret at all.

Stunned, Dean thought back through the events of his day and realized that he hadn't eaten a thing. Only old ale and a splash of imported Kentucky bourbon swam around his stomach, yet he hadn't even been thinking about it. He found his way to the rustic table in the basement kitchen, probably where the Earl's servants took their meals every day, and wondered just what about him gave away the lack of nourishment. No one else noticed it. Not even Mrs. Moore, who regularly force fed both Winchester brothers as if one of them skipping a meal would reflect badly on her.

"I'm not a chef but you'll enjoy the wild turkey," said Castiel with a slight lift of the corner of his mouth. He placed a plate of cold meats, cheese, and bread before Dean, obvious leftovers from a much grander meal above stairs.

"Thanks," Dean replied, though he didn't know what to make of the man. His stomach rumbled, though, and he tucked into the cold midnight supper. "Aren't you eating?"

The Earl, seated casually across from him, shook his head and seemed pleased enough just to watch the meal being consumed. He crossed one leg over the other and sat at a sideways angle. Even a Kansas country boy like Dean knew that sort of loose posture was too familiar and informal for a man like him. Had he been among his own class, they certainly would have gossiped about his uncouth behavior. Dean chewed his wild turkey, considering the implications of Castiel being so flippant around him in the privacy of that vast aristocratic kitchen. Perhaps the Earl considered it an opportunity to be naughty and not adopt proper posture, thinking a man like Dean, so thoroughly American and from such a humble background, wouldn't know better. But on the other hand, Dean found it endearing.

Endearing?

He froze, mid-chew, interrogating himself over why he felt that way. A blot of faint sweat erupted over his brow. He hoped Castiel wouldn't notice his sudden anxiety the more the reality over being utterly alone together in that kitchen sank in. Noticing a dark shadow of stubble around Castiel's jaw made it worse, as did the steep angles of his plump lips.

Damn it.

The fear of being discovered would have never bothered Dean before but Sam had drilled it into his skull not to have salacious intent toward the Earl of Rothes while their income depended on it. Men like Dean with dual attractions to men and women walked a fine line dividing normalcy and all that society deemed both disgusting and downright illegal. It was easier at home--he knew which sorts of men would welcome his advances in Molly houses and such--but isolation in a foreign country made Dean uncertain and afraid for the first time in his life.

Dean was afraid because he knew, eating that cold dinner, that his intimidation about that man watching him amounted to attraction. Not just the jokes to make his brother squirm. No, something about Castiel rocked Dean to his core.

"Detective?"

"What?" he blurted.

A smile twitched Castiel's lips and disappeared. "I inquired about the investigation."

"Oh." Dean picked at his bread and absently wished for butter. "It's slow-going. We went back to Whitechapel yesterday and interviewed a few people who knew Mrs. Chapman. There was some indication of a lead when Miss Jo Harvelle described a fight between the victim and a gentleman she'd been seeing but he has a solid aliby for the night of her slaying."

"I see." The Earl nodded thoughtfully.

"I, um.... I was drawn to a building nearby thereafter and my brother went to a pawnbroker who was rumored to have Mrs. Chapman's possessions sold to him after her death."

"And did he?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, nodding. "He collected those things for evidence. I wasn't there though. I'd gone to speak with a woman who ... who owns a public house." And he'd spent time with two young men for sale that night, both of whom resembled the man sitting across the table.

"Madame Abaddon," surmised Castiel coolly.

Dean's eyes flashed up, suddenly exposed. "You know her?"

"Everyone does. She caters to a certain set of society." Fingers stroked his chin in careful repose but nothing about his demeanor suggested he knew from personal experience. "I don't suppose you found anything revealing there."

"No." Just your wife and her lady-in-waiting.

"Keep your eye on that woman. She's not to be trusted. Women like her always know more about things than they'll volunteer and they'll bewitch you to keep you from asking the pertinent questions."

"Got it," agreed Dean.

A set of long legs unfolded and pushed Castiel upright, propelling him to a darker corner of the deserted kitchen. Dean couldn't see through the shadows but heard a smaller door open and shut. The Earl rustled around, searching through cupboards, and then he turned to a baking table with a porcelain butter dish. It looked like one anyway, white and gleaming against the hearth light. A butter dish? Had Dean said it out loud? Questions flooded his mind until he began questioning his own sanity. Castiel knew he hadn't eaten all day and then he knew he wished for butter on his bread, neither of which were voiced concerns.

"Forgive me for offering bread without butter. My footmen would be highly disappointed in my rude conduct," said Castiel, nearly answering Dean's thoughts.

"It's no trouble," Dean mumbled.

The Earl glanced up from the baking table deeper within the shadows. There appeared that little smile, but was it truly there or was the darkness playing tricks on Dean? Their eyes met over the distance in the vast kitchen, Castiel's body silhouetted by the roaring hearth fire. He appeared ethereal. For a moment, Dean questioned whether the Earl's feet even touched the floor or if he levitated there on his own power. Time suspended as flickers of blue flames rippled through Castiel's bright eyes, a sight that should have terrified Dean but he couldn't even be certain that it was real. Dean was exhausted, after all. He might have dissolved into the weary hallucinations that plagued his brother just before the crippling headaches left him bedridden after touching the powers through the veil in his brain.

Castiel brought him the butter and as soon as he stepped into the light, all effects of unnatural appearance dropped away into the dark. Hints of sincerity bled through his countenance then, as if he truly felt a desire to give Dean all the things he needed.

"Your butter, Detective," he said softly, handing it over.

"Thanks," Dean replied. "Um, could you call me Dean?"

"Yes. As you wish, Dean." There. Finally. A real smile brought out straight, white teeth and a glimpse of the tip of a soft, pink tongue.

It had the opposite affect Dean expected. The desire to hear his name from those lips rose up through his chest like licks of fire and took him aback. A strange air permeated that night. He did strange things and thought about even stranger proposals. For once in his adult life, the case wasn't the foremost consideration on his mind, opening him to peculiar new territory.

Dean stood, deliberate in his movements as he was uncertain, and kept his eyes on that man in the crumpled richly tailored suit of clothes. Calm blue eyes answered his and maintained a closeness that could have been taken for a sign. Permission. Yes, Dean. Do it. His knuckles dragged overtop the rustic kitchen table, perhaps a vain attempt at keeping himself grounded, and he took a step forward. Damn if his heart didn't pound like a schoolchild facing a first spark, and that irritated him. He certainly wasn't new at this. A leatherbound journal back in a trunk at the flat recorded each and every conquest--male and female--for the last two years. Other journals at home recorded similar conquests of years past. Yet, standing there in Castiel's basement kitchen void of any servant witnesses stripped him down to the rawness of the first time.

"Why did you come this way on your walk tonight?" Castiel whispered, vaguely accusing in his sharp syllables.

"I dunno," replied Dean truthfully. "I just started walking."

It became instantly clear that Castiel was an unpracticed Earl as he ended Dean's response with warm hands framing his face. Dean grew all too aware of his own stubble beneath Castiel's awkward palms and thought perhaps he was altogether rustic like that kitchen table deemed fit only for servant use. Somewhat awkward, yes, but altogether sweet and truly pulled to Dean, kisses found each other without another word. Castiel's full lips felt as inviting as he'd imagined and a tentative sweep of his tongue tasted gentle and unassuming--if such sentiments had flavors at all.

In time, the surge of that first, long kiss gave way to loving foreheads resting together and brushing noses. Fingertips tested the curves, dips, and stretches of stubble on each other's faces, doing so blindly, eyes closed by the overpowering moment. One of Castiel's arms fell around Dean's waist and they finally looked at each other. Soft feathery kisses touched his cheekbones to his nose and lips.

"I must get back to my brother. He's been ill." The moment became too intimate too fast for Dean and he sought the quickest exit. Panic welled. He felt too much.

"Of course," Castiel murmured patiently.

Smoothing over any possible hurt, Dean said, "Soon...." with a promising nod.

"Soon, Dean," replied the Earl, looking a bit smaller and far more human.

Sam was going to kill him.


	7. Chapter 7

"What’s the matter with you?" demanded Sam, again, walking toward Whitechapel with Dean.

"Nothing," he muttered.

"You’ve said maybe six words in four days."

"Worried about you is all," Dean lied, but only partially.

"I'm fine," assured Sam with a quick grin, "and you're an awful liar."

"Shut up." Grumbling as they walked, Dean thumbed through the Daily News. It had become his habit to scour all of the newspapers he could get his hands on each day should they reveal any possible leads. He grumbled again and shook his head. "Listen to this shit."

"Fire away."

"Whitechapel and Spitalfields are always interesting neighbourhoods," Dean read aloud, "and recent events have made them decidedly more interesting. They have afforded startling illustrations of the dreadful possibilities of life down in the unfathomable depths of these vast human warrens. At all times one who strolls through this quarter of town, especially by night, must feel that below his ken are the awful deeps of an ocean teeming with life, but enshrouded in impenetrable mystery. As he catches here and there a glimpse of a face under the flickering, uncertain light of a lamp-the face perhaps of some woman, bloated by drink and distorted by passion-he may get a momentary shuddering sense of what humanity may sink to when life is lived apart from the sweet health-giving influences of fields and flowers, of art and music and books and travel, of the stimulus of interesting enterprise, the gentle amenities of happy hours and intercourse with the educated and cultured. A momentary sense of what human nature may become may here and there flash in upon one as he gazes out upon the dark waters, but it is only when the human monster actually rises for a moment to the surface and disappears again, leaving a victim dead and disemboweled, that one quite realizes that that momentary scene is a dread reality." Dean huffed, utterly irritated by the trivialization. "They're writing about this area like poverty's the sole cause of this brutality and we should all feel sorry for these people. It's the upper class that refuses to offer support, education, and proper medical care to pull these people up to a place where they can help themselves survive."

"You ought to run for public office," his brother quipped.

Sighing, Dean closed the paper and folded it under his arm. "I'm serious, Sammy."

"I know. It's the same in Five Points too," Sam replied. "Anything in the inquest?"

"Nothing we don't already know," said Dean, referring to an inquest into Annie Chapman's murder held at the Working Lads' Institute the day before. "Inspector Chandler said there wasn't any new evidence and the coroner--a man called Baxter--summarized the evidence we already have, which was all rather pointless if you ask me. Baxter thinks the killer's a highly educated man with knowledge of anatomy. That, of course, has everyone worked up into fits."

"Because educated men cannot possibly be so brutal. Woe to the republic! Well, perhaps this so-called letter from the killer will have something useful," Sam decided with little hope in his voice.

"Hope so. We might want to have a closer look at the murder Saturday night reported in the London Times today, I think. I have notes on it back at the flat." Dean had trouble keeping all the foreign papers straight. "A lady called Jane Beetmoor was killed in someplace called Birtley Fell. They're not sure if there's a connection to the Whitechapel cases but we ought to have a look. They buried her already though."

"I suspect there will be quite a few unstable people taking to the streets after nightfall to replicate the Whitechapel murders."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "Or the murderer himself will take advantage of the confusion and spread himself around a far wider territory."

"But do you think his work is that random?" Sam probed.

"I don't know what I think, to be honest."

And that was the truth about so much. The Winchester brothers fell into silence as they walked side-by-side to the Central News Agency office. They'd received a tip from a reporter at the Times just that morning about a letter supposedly written by the Whitechapel killer, but in the same breath, he warned Sam and Dean about the Central News Agency's quietly dubious reputation. He knew the Winchesters could suss out whether the letter was a fake or the real deal, which, if it was real, could blow their investigation wide open. All Sam had to do was touch the document to feel out the story behind it.

Of course, that meant talking Sam into using his second sight again. Eyeing him discreetly, Dean couldn't pick apart his brother's mood beyond that of a man focused on his job. Asking him to do it again so soon after recovering from the last bout of crippling headaches wasn't fair, yet Dean sensed such pressure and urgency to hunt down the killer. Perhaps he was concerned about more women needlessly being slaughtered. Perhaps, and more selfishly so, he needed to impress Castiel.

Kissing aristocratic lips haunted Dean, yet he hadn't seen Castiel in four days. He hoped avoiding him altogether would purge that heady, delicious taste from his tongue but it only left him starved. Each night the darkness closed in around Dean and taunted him as he laid in his bed back at the flat. London wind chilled through the window, teasing and whispering how the shadows and fires knew his perverted secrets. The night witnessed his intimacy with the Earl of Rothes. It wasn't like a string of nameless dock workers or burley labormen. And it certainly wasn't like rutting against a hard body without so much as learning his name when they parted ways. Ordinarily he never thought much of his tendencies and he certainly enjoyed wild nights in the Molly houses back home. An ocean away, though, he felt exposed and acutely aware of how wrong it was to be him. Indeed, the London night witnessed the wickedness of a murderer just as the London night witnessed what was broken in Dean--the part of him that threatened to fall in love with men as easily as women.

The Winchester brothers came to a congested part of London amid business offices, warehouses, and competing newspaper offices spread through the region. Dean followed Sam as he crossed a cobblestone street and darted around carts, wagons, and horsedrawn streetcars overflowing with passengers. Shrugging lower into his overcoat did little to keep out the damp English autumn weather.

"You're still doing it," Sam commented as he opened the door.

Dean ducked into the Central News Agency building ahead of him. "Doing what?"

"Not telling me whatever's eating you up inside."

"Lack of hearty American food. I'm starving." He grinned over at Sam, trying to disarm the unwelcome curiosity.

It took little effort to get into the editor's office once they convinced other reporters that they were, in fact, reporters too--from the New York Tribune no less. Once they got to check on their credentials, Sam and Dean would be long gone, and never having used their real names. Harry and Frank worked nicely, as did their nondescript overcoats purchased from a used clothier in Whitechapel that could be thrown away as soon as they got what they needed.

"Right this way, gents," said the editor as he led them to his office. Dean had already forgotten his name. "Those parasites over at the Times must've gotten wind of it from one of our less than scrupulous reporters, I'm afraid. We're uncertain of its authenticity but it certainly arrived in the morning post from outside the office."

"Is there anything to indicate an identity?" Sam asked, brightening up his New York accent for effect.

"Indeed," the editor replied, sitting at his desk. "The author uses rather undignified language and I hazard to say this killer is quite uneducated. Just have a look for yourselves. Here you are." He handed over an inconspicuous white envelope with the Central News Agency office address scrawled in red ink. "You'll find the grammatical nuances and punctuation truly puzzling, aside from the obvious ghastly nature of what he wrote. A barbaric brute if you ask me."

The pair of men eyed each other sideways over the envelope. Silent communication filtered between them. Uneducated went against everything they knew about their suspect but they kept quiet should the reporter publish their theories. The last thing they needed was the killer reading about them over his morning porridge in whatever rat hole he called home.

Careful not to handle the potential evidence too much, Dean unfolded the letter and allowed Sam to read it over his shoulder.

_25\. Sept. 1888._

_Dear Boss,  
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck._

_Yours truly  
Jack the Ripper_

_Dont mind me giving the trade name_

_PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. ha ha_

Several points stood out to Dean right away but he kept his face as stoic as when he'd walked into the office. His brother followed suit, though he guessed both of them ran through many of the same conclusions. He refolded the letter into the envelope and handed it back to the editor, deciding there was, in fact, no need to let Sam put his hands on it just yet. If necessary, a few picked locks would give them access to the office and the letter later in the night when there weren't so many witnesses.

"Strange letter," commented Dean with a casual air.

"Yes, quite," the editor agreed.

"Do you think it's authentic?" Sam questioned.

"Given the gruesome, offensive language, I have little reason to doubt that an unstable mind wrote such a confession. I couldn't fathom a ne'er-do-well concocting a false letter of this nature. Why, to think of such bloody deeds at all lends to the instability of the author. That leads me to conclude the letter is authentic, indeed."

Nodding, Sam remained blank in expression. "And will you circulate it for publication?"

"Not at this time," said the editor gravely. "If you gents at the Tribune dare publish it before permission, of course, there will undoubtedly be consequences. You must know that. If the killer feels we're against him, we risk loosing this line of communication before Scotland Yard catches him." As he spoke, the editor clipped off the ends of three cigars and handed two of them to Sam and Dean while keeping one for himself. Leaning back in his leather chair, his weight caused an unattractive squeak. "I do hope we've come to an agreement on the matter."

"Of course." With a sharp, serious nod, Sam accepted the cigar with his thanks.

*****

At the flat, Dean flopped into an overstuffed chair and leaned on the windowsill peering out at the western sky. The sun slowly sank into the horizon--if he could have seen it through the London cityscape--and he leaned on his arm inhaling the biting evening air. Sam had spread out on a sofa further in the room, limbs spilling from every side, and fell asleep with a newspaper draped across his chest.

Dean began loathing nighttime the longer each moon cycle separated him from Castiel, yet he couldn't make himself return to the Portland stone mansion. They'd have to go tomorrow whether he liked it or not though. A note had already been sent alerting the Earl of Rothes that they'd come across new evidence. Of course, Dean still wasn't sold on the authenticity of the letter but they couldn't just let it slide into oblivion if it truly did turn out to be real. His main concern was keeping Sam from guessing about the stolen kiss four nights behind Dean, while holding onto Castiel's attention at the same time. He admitted feeling torn between the two of them, although that sensation probably came from his own fabricated anxieties instead of something rooted in truth.

Somewhere below on those crowded winding streets closer to the darkness, congestion, and fog encasing Whitechapel, working women emerged from daytime rest to ply their trade. Dangerous streets awaited them, far more dangerous than those Lady Margaret enjoyed on shopping outings. Their lives, by some awful twist of poverty, were somehow less than worthy until they were slaughtered by a madman. Then they were held up as examples of what filth and poverty will due to a population.

He leaned down and rested his forehead on the windowsill. A stiff breeze cut through his waistcoat and shirt, but he did little to keep himself warm. Part of Dean needed to understand what those neglected women endured if he meant to catch their murderer. He detested the idea of not being able to end the slaughter before more victims found Jack the Ripper's blade.

Soft rapping on the door startled Dean from his reverie but could not penetrate Sam's nap. He thwacked his brother's shoe in passing, which jerked him to consciousness in a mess of flailing long limbs. He nearly tumbled to the floor and cussed at Dean, giving giving him the courage to laugh for once.

At the door stood Mrs. Moore dressed in her usual mourning black satin along with a black bonnet and cloak cut just beyond her waistline. She smiled abruptly as if she hoped for another face to greet her at the door but didn't want Dean to be offended by her disappointment. He returned her smile, angling his shoulder to one side and offering her an unspoken glimpse of drowsy Sam smoothing out his hair and clothes on the sofa.

"How are you, Mrs. Moore?" The inquiry came as Dean's sincere attempt at pleasantries.

"I'm quite well. Thank you. I hope you're well too, Detective." Another faint smile. Good. Progress was progress, if only to ensure that his brother didn't feel torn between them. "I wondered if either of you have been to a harvest fair in New York."

Sam joined Dean at the door, drawn by blonde hair and a sweet voice in his ears, it seemed. "I don't know about Dean but I know I haven't had the pleasure. Good evening, Miss Jessie."

"Good evening, Sam." Was that a blush rising in her cheeks? She continued quickly. "It's harvest time, as you know. We're a little beyond the harvest, actually, but the festival will remain open until ten tonight. I wondered if you'd like to escort a widow and see the sights. You ought to do something in London aside from trudging through our uglier side."

"Sure. I'd love to go." A brightened face never looked more awake as Sam slid into his overcoat--not the used one from Whitechapel but his own proper clothes.

It amused Dean but he said nothing to give it away. Instead, he drifted further into the flat and gave them space. He grabbed the fire poker and tended to the logs, expecting Sam to chatter on about the farm back in Kansas as they disappeared into the city, but they remained in the doorway. Dean looked up at them, feeling watched. They eyed him expectantly but he didn't understand what they meant.

"Are you coming, Detective?" asked Mrs. Moore.

"Oh, I didn't realize I was invited," replied Dean hesitantly. Their relationship was, at best, lukewarm when they needed something from one another.

"Of course you're invited," she insisted.

Then it dawned on him that Mrs. Moore couldn't go out with Sam alone. Social decorum demanded that they be escorted by a chaperone despite the fact that she had already been married once. She wasn't married anymore and Sam sure as hell wasn't married either. Going out alone together in daylight let alone at night would make people stare at best and spread gossip at worst. She didn't need that attention. They needed to keep to themselves as well, which made Mrs. Moore greet Dean like a friend so that she could persuade him to go along. He understood. Hell, he didn't even blame her for it.

Dean put out the fire and left with Sam and the widow, headed out into the city. Cool evening air nipped at their cheeks as they strolled to a park not far from the Queen's palace. Through the gates, magnificent gardens contained tents of games, gazebos playing music from brass bands or hand-cranked machines, enclosed attractions of macabre freak shows, and a great deal of other sights unknown to the brothers.

"You Londoners certainly know how to put on entertainment," Sam commented at her side. He paused, looking over a stall of fresh produce.

Mrs. Moore smiled a small glimpse of pride for having impressed them. "Are your fairs so very different in New York?"

"They're mostly agricultural displays," he said.

"Yes, our agriculture is quite important to us as well but we do enjoy games and dancing. Have you ever seen a roundabout?"

Sam glanced down at her as they strolled ahead of Dean, her arm linked around his elbow. "A what?"

"A roundabout. Just there." Mrs. Moore's arm extended, pointing out a massive contraption of a round planform sailing passengers around and around on various carved animals painted in bright colors. Through the crowds they heard fair organ music and observed bright, smiling faces from adults and children alike.

"Oh, I saw one in a newspaper once but never in person. I believe we called it a merry-go-round," said Sam, nodding lightly. "Would you like to try it?"

"Hmm. Perhaps."

Falling behind the pair, Dean clasped his hands behind his back. He listened to them chat about the sights and, even though they nearly forgot he was there, he didn't mind so much. The truth was he didn't feel up to socializing anyway. Being relegated to the lady's chaperone gave him just enough of a job to keep him from driving himself insane thinking about the case and, eventually, about Castiel. He wasn't sure how Mrs. Moore felt about his brother but she certainly showed more expression in her face that evening than their entire week living in her building. Holding Sam's elbow was the proper thing to do even if she hated him, but she tipped her head back and giggled at his observations. It appeared that she held some interest. Still, Dean's protective nature propelled him forward.

"Mrs. Moore, I wondered if you'd care to dance," Dean offered, poking his head in between them.

Sam's brows crinkled together. "You dance?"

"Shut it," he muttered. A quick smile and an extended hand came then. "Shall we?"

"Certainly," Mrs. Moore agreed with a polite grin.

Dean lead her by the hand over a tightly packed, crowded dirt path to a gazebo where others danced a waltz amid glowing lanterns. He could feel skepticism emanating from the blonde lady as he swept her up into the waltzing position, but neither she nor his brother knew everything about him. Dean had learned to dance from his mother before Quantrill's Raiders destroyed their family farm in Kansas. She'd said a lady could always tell a gentleman by how carefully he handled her in even the most robust dances. So, there in a London gazebo, Dean followed the three count rhythm of the music and they swirled along with other couples.

Occasionally he spotted Sam leaning on a gaslight post edging the dirt road. He flashed a smile over Mrs. Moore's head at his brother and Sam merely rolled his eyes through a half-smile, and then wandered off to a stall selling hot cider.

"My brother likes you," Dean said, not wasting time.

Mrs. Moore's brow arched. "Oh?"

"He's too much of a gentleman to say so but I can tell he does. If you don't have right feelings for him, then I gotta be straight and ask you not to lead him on because he's had a rough time of it."

"You're being very blunt, sir." Her tone edged on offended.

"I am," he admitted with a nod.

Her lips thinned out into a pensive line and she averted her eyes, thinking it over, he guessed. "What do you mean by he's had a rough time of it?"

"Sammy was engaged once," said Dean flatly. "Her name was Sarah Blake and she was one of those cultivated, intellectual types. Her father was an art collector. Closer they got to the wedding, the more she seemed to realize she was to be a copper's wife. He hadn't been made detective yet. So she gave him a choice--her or his job. Well, you gotta know my brother to know that ain't no easy spot for him. His sense of justice is so strong that he thought he could fix all the corruption in our precinct. Five Points is quite a bit like your Whitechapel. So he chose public service over himself and that was the end of Sarah Blake. It very nearly broke him."

Mrs. Moore listened thoughtfully and, nodding, absorbed what he divulged without her usual gruff attitude. "I see," she murmured. "What a selfless thing to do."

"Yeah, he's good that way," agreed Dean quietly.

"I see why you're protective," she added.

It took him aback and he nearly tripped in a turn. "Well, thanks."

But she still didn't give any hint of her feelings toward Sam. For the moment, Dean let the song finish and let the matter settle between them.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean hardly believed it, sitting in a leather chair beside his brother and listening to him converse with the man perched in an even larger leather chair across the desk. The great Lord spoke to Sam about the current state of the murder investigation without so much as a flutter of a lash thrown Dean's way. He regarded the detective as nothing better than a stranger.

 _Excuse me_ , Dean wanted to say, _but don't you remember your tongue in my mouth just below stairs? Don't you remember what we felt?_

The Earl of Rothes tilted back in his chair, the leather wrapping him in warmth. A flicker of narrowed blue eyed turned icy in one instant and returned to Sam with full attention in the next instant. Dean's breath hitched in his chest. What was that? Had Castiel eavesdropped on his thoughts just then? Absurd. Ridiculous.

"But, again, the authorities seem to believe the assailant an uneducated tradesman or possibly a foreigner," Sam said. He shifted in his chair as if feeling too large for it.

"We don't agree with that," said Dean in an effort to appear present in the conversation even though he couldn't tear his concentration away from the shape of Castiel's lips.

Sam shot a confused eye over at him. "I just said the same thing."

"Right, right." Damn it all. Dean leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "Forgive me. I haven't been sleeping well. The case, it's--"

"--It's taking a toll on you being powerless to predict the movements of a madman against innocent women," Castiel said, the quiet roll of his monotone encroaching on Dean's senses. The very syllables soothed him and caressed just here or there in spots where his brain ached. "Detective, it's best to accept the truth that there is real evil in the greater cosmic design and such evil will strike somehow and someplace no matter how we endeavor to stop it. What matters, in the end, is that we never stop fighting for the good of all mankind--impoverished or affluent. I believe the killer will strike once more before you track him down. These women shall not have died in vain, rest assured."

As he spoke, Dean found his gaze lifting from the stooped position over his lap. He held Castiel's eyes for a long moment and both loathed and luxuriated in the soaring sensation that man's attention gave him. Just beneath the blue veneer resided something else--something silvery and luminous--but Dean considered the possibility that he imagined it. Pale light bled through the way shadows crept in darkness, washed in a silvery-blue light from someplace unspecific making the brain question whether it was imaginary or real.

"You called us here because you indicated you had new information, my Lord," said Sam, who plowed ahead in single-minded devotion to the case, utterly oblivious to the personal struggle Dean endured.

He held onto Castiel's gaze a moment more, reminded suddenly of that stolen night in the kitchen below stairs. There had been a blazing hearth fire and copper pots and pans hanging over the work tables. Yes, it was coming back to him, those moments before their unexpected kiss. He remembered the dreamlike moment of seeing blue flames in Castiel's eyes for the smallest moment, and then they'd gone on as if nothing of the sort ever happened. Time slowed again, just as it had that night.

Pointed heeled shoes stabbed their way into the Earl's private office. "Angelface--oh."

Lady Margaret stopped in the doorway, not expecting to see company, wore a deep wine colored silk gown with satin and velvet ribbons of various blood shades. Her singsong tone bordered on something darker but her usual slithery tone overtook her in the next moment.

"Hello, boys," she said, the corners of her mouth turning up into something that was supposed to convey a smile but didn't quite make it.

Castiel straightened and laced his fingers in a collapsed pyramid on his desk. "What can I do for you, Meg? I'm in the middle of something rather pressing, I'm afraid."

Her smile shifted momentarily. Was it a sneer? "Indeed. The investigation."

"Yes. The investigation," replied Castiel somewhat coolly.

"Well!" Lady Margaret clapped her small hands together and rocked back and forth on her heels in such a lighthearted manner that it chilled Dean rather than impressed upon his positive opinion of her. "Since you're so immersed in your duties, I thought I'd take Ruby out for a bit of shopping. I shall return in time for tea. Good luck seeking liberty and justice for all, dearest." She wiggled her gloved fingers in farewell, grinning at her own cynical mocking of American values.

Once she disappeared, Castiel let out a faint sigh. "Do forgive her, gentlemen."

"Women...." chuckled Dean absently.

"Yes, quite," Castiel replied. Tension brought on by his peculiar wife shifted back to their work as he shuffled through documents scattered across his desk. "Now, the reason I called you here today. I assume you've seen this mark carved into each victims' flesh to date." He showed Sam and Dean photographs they both had already studied back at Mrs. Moore's flat. "To the untrained eye, those slash marks appear to be nothing more than the marks left by a butcher's blade."

Dean nodded. "Or a surgeon."

"Or a surgeon. Indeed," echoed Castiel.

"My brother believes in earnest the killer we're hunting has medical training. I'm inclinded to agree to a certain extent. I believe there's much more to it," Sam explained as he carded through the photographs. Sepia images of women in various states of undress stared back at him from the mortician's slab.

The faintness of a pleased smile creased Castiel's mouth and distracted Dean against his will. He dropped his eyes to the photographs in his lap, preferring to examine grainy images of hacked up victims to the uncertainty of an Earl who seemed to play with him.

"You're both right, I think. The work the killer did was clearly by a skilled hand, but what caught my eye more were the marks just here in the belly flesh of each woman." The Earl's finger traced the bloody lines in the photograph of Annie Chapman's right abdominal region.

Both Sam and Dean tilted forward for a closer look.

"It's a cross ... kinda," said Dean.

"I've seen that before. It looks a little bit like crosses the Irish back in New York have in their Catholic churches." The younger Winchester tossed a quick hand through his hair to curl it behind his ear as his mind twisted and turned through its vast knowledge. "It's not exactly the same as the Irish cross though. That could be the ... um ... unsteady canvas with which to work."

"Come on, Sammy," hissed Dean under his breath.

"What? It's difficult to cut into skin and--"

"Sammy," repeated Dean, a bit sharper that time. "These were living breathing women once. Don't forget that." He glanced at Castiel, who observed their brotherly spat with quiet interest. "I apologize. My brother can be rather scholarly and sometimes looses touch with the reasons bringing us to murder investigations."

"You work very well together," Castiel observed.

The moment passed without further thought for him, showing his mind's sharp ability to switch from one track to another in just a breath of a thought. Reaching to a bookcase behind his desk, Castiel located a book with gilt edges that looked older than any of them. He thumbed through it without explanation and appeared to take his time as if the Winchester brothers didn't presently sit across from him. A methodical finger traced the lines of a language Dean couldn't read, not that he made it known just how he leaned closer and watched the Earl's work. Finally, Castiel flipped a few pages and stopped about a third of the way through the book. He tapped an illustration that indeed resembled something like the crosses Catholic priests carried in and out of Mass back home in the Irish neighborhoods.

"I believe the symbol carved into these unfortunate women is known as the Coptic cross," Castiel reported after a time. "Have a look, gentlemen."

One leaf of the book sat in Sam's hand and the other in Dean's, allowing both of them to read about it. They learned how the Coptic cross may have been influenced by an ancient Egyptian symbol for life known as the ankh. The Copts were the native Christians of Egypt, it said, and many of the Copts tattooed the cross on their right arms. Aside from the symbol being carved on the right side of the victims, he made no sense of why it was relevant to the Whitechapel murders.

"The killer's a Copt," ventured Sam.

"One would think so, yes, and it's quite the possibility still, but I have another suspicion. Last year I was approached by a gentleman from a," he shrugged lightly, "let's say a private organization. The man invited me to join this organization, which he claimed to be an elder therein, and he spoke of various matters concerning cosmic power and, speaking plainly, the occult. I declined his invitation and never gave it another thought. However, his card contained this symbol. I only just made out the shape on the bodies yesterday morning, or I would have certainly made it known to you before now. You see how difficult these photographs are to decipher."

"Yes," Sam replied with a nod, glancing at one of the bodies.

"Do you still have the card?" questioned Dean. His eyes narrowed faintly, trying to take measure of the Earl. Suspicion plagued him at the worst moments.

"I do not. It was last year, as I said." Castiel's tone sounded sincere and regretful.

For the moment, Dean pushed his suspicion down into the pit of his gut. He certainly didn't take Castiel for the killer but the revelation that the suspect courted him in some secret society meant they were more than aware of him. If they knew Castiel, then the killer likely knew the Earl hired American detectives to hunt him down and bring him to justice. That fact alone put Castiel in danger as well as his odd little Countess for a wife, not that Dean concerned himself much with that obstacle. It did occur to him, however, that Castiel kept at least three women under his protection--Lady Margaret, Lady Ruby, and Mrs. Jessie Moore--which meant more women unknown to Dean might have enjoyed that protection as well. He made a mental note to investigate whether the victims had any connections to the Earl of Rothes. If so, Sam's pretty little sweetheart was in mortal danger.

"Wait a minute," Sam said, studying the illustration in the book. "This isn't like the Irish cross after all. It's not even the Coptic cross--not exactly. Look here. The circle over the top half of the cross on the victims is a triple ring, not a single ring. Such circular symbols have occult origins. Some believe various spirits and things can be summoned through these symbols along with spoken incantations."

Castiel's face remained unchanged except a slightly paler complexion as if his blood draining betrayed his cool reserve.

"The killer is very likely a member of the secret society that courted you last year, sir, which means he's quite the lunatic indeed if he believes he can summon spirits by killing these poor women," Sam added, his eyes lifting to show the bright excitement of discovering a new lead.

"You'll need to infiltrate the society then," said Castiel none too lightly.

"Done," Dean said with a sharp nod.

Blue eyes flashed to his, unable to conceal the astonishment at his bravery--or his audacity and ego. A flicker of an amused grin tugged on just one corner of Castiel's mouth. He leaned back again and lazily traced the tip of his forefinger around the rim of an empty whiskey glass. They regarded each other for no longer than a few seconds but Dean understood in that moment. Castiel hadn't forgotten him. He simply put on a solid front, drawing a sturdy line between that which he hired Dean to do and that which they wanted to be to each other. Whatever that entailed. Dean still hadn't quite figured out whether he was merely a toy for a bored married Earl or a complete awakening of the man's senses. Perhaps it didn't matter.

Dean shook himself inwardly. He detested himself for letting his thoughts repeatedly drift to Castiel's motives and intentions rather than the motives and intentions of the Whitechapel murderer. That was why men like him never got mixed up with fanciful romantic affairs, for they never could manage to separate professional thoughts from personal desires. He had a job to do. As long as innocent women were dying, Dean had to repress the impulses of everything he wanted. It had always been that way.

"Excuse me for a moment," Dean said, rising from the leather chair. "I think better when I've had a cigarette. I'll just, you know, be in the garden rather than smoke up your house. The Countess doesn't seem like a lady to tolerate that odor."

A chuckle. He made Castiel laugh and it disarmed him.

"Oh, you're resorting to smoking already?" mumbled Sam with a sideways glance.

Dean said nothing. He didn't need to after so many years of living and working nearly every moment with his brother, who knew the cigarettes only came out when his agitation and lack of clarity reached an unmanageable place in his mind. Sam knew exactly what it meant even if he didn't understand all the reasons.

"Excuse me. I can find my own way to the garden. Feel free to keep working without me. I'll be back shortly," he said again with an awkward bob of his head.

If he admitted it to himself, the grand mansion suffocated him. It all seemed rather unnecessary, especially when he considered the squalor in which the murder victims lived, yet Castiel himself didn't seem to be a solid fixture there either. Sure, he slept in fancy sheets and wore expensive suits like he was supposed to, but the careless rumpled quality about him suggested he cared about wealth about as much as Dean did. The lady of the house, however, she made certain her presence and taste was in every corner of every room throughout that overdone city residence. Walking through the hallways to the staircase reminded Dean of exactly who was in charge there, at least in the home. The way Castiel spoke to her in his office seemed to bring her to heel in a subtle way though. Dean guessed that the Earl was in charge, fully and completely, when push came to shove. It brought forth the question of exactly what Castiel had hanging over Lady Margaret's head because she certainly wasn't the sort to give an ounce of power to anyone without fear of being exposed in something awful.

Dean made his way downstairs but maneuvered through the rear of the ground floor rather than leaving through the front door. He craved the privacy of a walled-in garden concealed from pedestrians strolling back and forth outside the front end of the house. A maid's eyes widened near the formal dining room as she passed Dean carrying an enormous crystal vase of fresh flowers. He nodded a silent greeting but didn't speak to her, remembering that domestics in New York were taught to make themselves invisible even though they wore harsh black and white uniforms. The maid's cheeks went pink and she scuttled by, apparently grateful to get away from the brash American guest of the Earl without speaking to him.

Outside, through a window that opened from the floor up like a strange door, Dean inhaled the autumn air. A light mist fell from the dull, lifeless sky, hinting at a harder storm to come. The rain wasn't heavy enough to drive him indoors, though not even a nor'easter could drive him indoors at that point, he thought. It wasn't even cool outside--not like New York at that time of year--but the colorful blooms scattered around the neatly laid out garden showed signs of wilting and shriveling with the colder nighttime air. Dean grabbed a cigarette from a silver folding case stowed inside his jacket's breast pocket. The match struggled to light in the cool misty afternoon air, but once the flame erupted, he indulged happily on the tobacco. It tasted like the mid-Atlantic where sharecroppers grew tall flowering plants to be harvested and dried in open-slatted barns for the enjoyment of men like him. It tasted like home across the ocean. His head tipped back and he looked up to the misty sky with a deep breath. Smoke curled upward from his lips.

Methodical investigation took over his thoughts and it left him thankful. It meant he cleared away enough cobwebs to see the way ahead. They finally had a solid lead that stopped them from chasing their tails around Whitechapel, supposing the new lead wasn't a false one. The killer could have etched the bloody symbol into those women knowing the detectives would stumble onto the secret society. Freemasons back home were blamed for all sorts of things they didn't do specifically because they were closed off from the world as a whole. Such tight bonds between men like them often led to fear from outsiders and it made them targets. Indeed, Dean kept that in mind despite the desire to follow the new lead. It had to be done even if it came to nothing. At the same time, he understood that even if the killer purposefully threw them off of his trail, he knew enough about the secret society to utilize that foreign symbol. There was still a connection.

The flagstone path beneath Dean's feet led him between rose bushes to a central tree behind a stone fountain. He hadn't seen such a massive tree in London outside of the many public parks, not that he'd ventured inside any of them. Tipping his head back again, he squinted through the high branches at the cloudy sky peeking through. Misty rain gathered into larger drops that rolled off the leaves and splattered here and there on Dean's shoulders and in his hair.

Abrupt and blind, Dean felt grabbed, yet not maliciously so, from behind, throwing his body into an instinctive reaction. He snatched a lapel and, swinging the assailant around, slammed a laughing Castiel into the tree trunk. The Earl of Rothes tossed his hands up in surrender as Dean breathed hard with the sudden fright. Castiel's low rolling laughter pointed to an innocence that meant he had no idea people couldn't sneak up on men like Dean even if it was a prank. Slowly, Dean's thundering heart calmed in his chest. He swallowed around a dry throat and relaxed his fighting grip on Castiel's rumpled jacket.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" barked Dean.

Castiel smiled, still leaning back on the tree even though Dean had let him go. "I saw you walking among the rose bushes and I found I needed to embrace you."

"You cannot snatch a copper from behind like that or you'll end up on the ground," he replied, irritated and pacing a wide circle with his hands on his hips. "Damn it, Cas! I could've knocked you unconscious."

The smile thinned. "What did you call me?"

"Oh ... uh ... Cas, I think. I dunno. It just came out. Sorry." Dean waved it off with a dismissive hand.

"No, I like it," Castiel offered quietly. He reached out just as Dean's pacing brought him close and he took his hand. "You said soon. It's nearly been a week. Have you not thought of me at all?"

The shift to intimacy came suddenly the way Castiel's mind switched tracks in a breath of a moment upstairs in that Portland stone mansion. Dean's wary eyes shifted to the row of windows on the second floor and searched for any faces that might have spied on them in the garden linked by the hands. He didn't pull away, nor did he want to, but he imagined the scores of servants indoors spying through lace curtains and gossiping among themselves. Closer still, he wondered just who lurked in the garden shed off to the far side against the east stone wall.

"My brother will be expecting us," Dean said in a low tone.

"He departed with the message that he's gone to our fine city library to see what he can discover about the symbol," replied Castiel, his voice turning far softer as opposed to cool and monotone.

"You're servants," he whispered back.

The Earl smiled indulgently. "My servants surely see and hear a great deal in this house that they're bound to keep silent. They're paid very well, in fact."

"Oh...."

"It's been nearly a week," Castiel repeated.

"Five days," whispered Dean.

"Indeed."

"Yeah."

Castiel's eyes twinkled bright with tiny stars in the field of blue. "Do you wish to kiss me again, Detective Winchester?"

"I can't," he blurted, and then licked his lips. "It's, uh... it's bad for our business."

The Earl's head tilted. "Are you certain about that, Dean?"

"No," he admitted.

"Do you ... feel ... for me?" asked Castiel.

"I don't know you," Dean said, plagued by uncertainty in wanting to admit that he did indeed feel powerful things for Castiel against his better judgment.

"Some may know each other for millennia but never truly connect, while others only pass each other on a train platform and see the universe in each other's eyes."

Quieted by the idea, Dean ceased his pacing and gave in to his body going still. He had never experienced such clarity in a thought expressed that way, but he knew Castiel spoke from something deep within his being. The man knew things, walked through experiences, and encountered the world in ways that Dean couldn't fathom. It felt as if reaching out to touch Castiel meant stretching his fingers toward the diamonds of glittery stars out there. Something bigger than Dean opened up to him by letting himself open to the Earl of Rothes, not that he pretended to understand it.

A robin flittered through the branches overhead as if the bird escaped to allow Dean and Castiel their privacy. He drew nearer and caught a breath of the Earl's clean, unique scent that seemed so familiar even after one encounter nights before in the kitchen. Castiel held his eyes and reached up to slip a palm over the sharp curve of Dean's stubbled jaw. That time, Dean didn't pull away or wonder about those who might see them in what most considered an unnatural embrace.

Sharing a kiss with Castiel left him breathless in moments. It had the same affect on the Earl too, it seemed, as his eyes peered at him through hooded, hazy lids. Dean knew the blurred headiness of arousal and felt it igniting throughout his own body as well. Castiel said nothing but clamped his hands along Dean's lapels and spun them until it was Dean's back pressed against the rippling bark of the tree. Only the briefest hesitation delayed Castiel until he crushed his mouth over the detective's lips in a rushed, intense kiss. Skin on skin, stubble on stubble, their lips explored each other in neither a gentle nor tender manner. Each man clung to the other for life and if the tree hadn't supported them upright, they would have tumbled to the cold garden ground.

Thoughts refused to connect in Dean's mind. Only fragments of realization battled the consuming sensation of being pinned against a tree and marked like Castiel's territory. He felt an arm tug around his lower back, scraping between himself and the tree trunk, and a fist pulled at his jacket, not in anger but desperation. For as long as Dean had tried to keep the Earl away since arriving in London, he suddenly couldn't keep him close enough.

Dean's hand combed the back of Castiel's head and his mouth opened in a wordless welcoming sweep, allowing the hurried, fevered kiss to deepen. There was no question about it then. They hit the point of no return with each other and their bond.

Legs forced between each other gave Dean's hips open invitation, at least where his blind desire was concerned, and his pelvis curled into Castiel. His body stuttered, feeling Castiel shiver as the friction rubbed his rigid cock through his trousers. The buttons suddenly seemed rather flimsy and threatened to burst to relieve the pressure. It was true. It was real. He honestly wanted Dean bad enough to throw him against a tree outside in his garden and roughly kiss him until they began twisting clothes and pressing urgent hips against each other. Imagining dark, lustful scenes of Castiel stroking his thick length there against the tree produced a stifled moan into their impassioned kisses.

As if reading his mind, Castiel let go of the grip around his back and passed his clawed hand over the obvious bulge filling Dean's trousers. A single button popped. Hips rolled with the palming, rubbing motion until sparks threatened at the base of his spine. Hoarsely, Deann groaned Castiel's name as the Earl wetly mouthed his throat.

A shift in tighter pressure and Dean's spine twisted, pushing him into Castiel's chest. Castiel wedged his thigh tighter between Dean's to keep him upright as his head rolled back against the tree trunk. His mouth hung open with uneven gasps until he felt lightning coil up through his stomach and spine directly from his cock. Dean came there against the Earl of Rothes' garden tree, gladly pinned there with no escape, and he clawed at strong yet narrow biceps while riding it out and needing more. Stars exploded in his eyes again just the way they had when he allowed himself to give in to Castiel.

When he finally went limp against Castiel's shoulder, silence passed, allowing him to regain composure. And then the Earl peeled himself away with a light push. Dean's bleary eyes recognized the flushed red condition of his skin peeking through the open buttons of his shirt and his shortened breath. He knew Castiel had denied himself the same explosive completion. In fact, Dean's mouth involuntarily watered as his eyes dropped to the outline of a thick pillar of flesh in his trousers still needing rather attentive care.

"C'mere," Dean slurred in the quick aftermath of his climax. He grabbed Castiel's wrist and pushed himself off the tree, ready to drop to his knees the way he did for dock workers back home.

"No," protested Castiel in a soft tone. Pulling Dean close, he smiled, lines crinkling around his blue eyes, and traced a fingertip around the detective's cheek. "We're not like the others. We're not going to be yet another filthy tale of carnal love when we both know this is different. This is bigger than both of us, hm?"

"I know," Dean found himself murmuring with a serious nod.

Leaning into his ear, Castiel pressed a kiss to his neck. "I shall savor your memory until next we meet, Dean."

"When?" asked Dean.

"Soon," he whispered.


	9. Chapter 9

"I need to ask a favor of you." There wasn't time to allow confidence and duty to collapse under the weight of hesitation and shyness. Sam spoke boldly. He knew it just as he knew that lovely, graceful creature deserved so much more than the likes of him. Keep focused, he reminded himself darkly.

"A favor?" Mrs. Moore's mouth curved in a smile that, it seemed, she hoped to conceal from him. "Is not a roof over your head and food in your belly enough from me, Detective Winchester?"

Sam paused and regarded her with a wounded expression before he had a moment to affix something less telling on his features. "Yes, of course," he stammered. "You've been more than generous with my brother and I these past few weeks. It's just that I...." Hell. It wasn't going the way he needed it to go. He shifted where he stood and combed an uneasy hand through the back of his hair.

Her laughter rang softly like a distant church bell. "Sam," she interceded, stretching a slender hand over his forearm, "I'm only teasing you."

"Oh." And then he laughed too but not the sweet confident sound from her lips. No, he sounded far more anxious than he intended. "I'm sorry. I didn't sleep last night and I'm a little edgy." It was partially true at least.

"What can I do to assist you?" Mrs. Moore prodded. Her eyes shined indulgently.

"Come out with me tonight. What I mean to say is I believe I have a lead in the case but I must attend dinner to observe my target. It would be unbecoming, I think, to dine alone. If I was to go with a companion...."

"It would seem less suspicious," she offered.

"Yes," he replied. A hot flush burst over his face.

Mrs. Moore turned her hands over each other in consideration. "I suppose it could be time for me to go into half mourning," she ventured. A strange sense of relief brought new posture to her shoulders as if carrying the weight of a widow might soon be gone.

It stunned Sam, thinking of how asking her to go to dinner with him might have triggered a transition from full mourning to half--another step in leaving her dead husband in the past. He wondered if her time was up or if she took the opportunity to skirt out of it a little early. Some women who were not so highly placed in society could afford to sidestep some of the mourning rituals that often as long as two and a half years. Half mourning allowed a lady like Mrs. Moore to add purples and grays to her wardrobe where it had previously been stark black and she slowly reemerged into society. It honored Sam in a peculiar way that she decided to reemerge into society at his side.

"You're certain?"

"Yes," she replied, a smile blooming over her sweet face.

Impulsively, Sam snatched her hand between both of his and squeezed it. "Thank you, Mrs. Moore."

"We've been over this, Sam." An impish sort of smile gave her a mischievous aura as she leaned in closer and lowered her tone. "I call you Sam. You call me Jessie. At least in private."

In private. Those words gave him more of a thrill than he cared to admit. It wasn't gentlemanly.

*****

Dean sauntered into Harvelle's wearing his own clothes and feeling more like himself than he had in weeks. The sensation of Castiel's body around him and the mist in the air still lingered, though it had grown into a heavier rain since the previous day. But he allowed himself to remember, to smell the Earl's clean crisp soap on his skin, and to carry the taste of the man on his lips. He wore the idea like armor: someone wants me for me. Someone cares for me even knowing how I've killed for the greater good.

It was precisely Castiel that brought Dean back to Whitechapel that day. He spotted Ellen Harvelle behind the bar talking to the bartender gesturing wildly from the storage shelves to the bar itself.

"If it's a sip yer wantin', Ash, then ye gotta pay up like the rest of us," Ellen was heard to say as Dean elbowed his way closer to an empty space. "Yer a good worker but I'll not have ye drinkin' yerself blind and dumb. That's when folks come in here and take advantage of the right stupefied barkeep. Understand?"

The man she'd called Ash nodded. "Yes'm." He spotted an unattended Dean and threw a towel over his shoulder as he approached. "What can I get for you?" He sounded educated, an unexpected development for the neighborhood.

"Irish whiskey," Dean said. "I'm not choosy."

"You got it."

"Well, would you look at that? Dean Winchester!"

Dean smiled warmly. "Hiya, Mrs. Harvelle."

She seemed to have a habit of thinning out her accent when he came around as if she expected an American could not understand varied English tongues. "What's bringing you into our slice of paradise today then? Surely not another murder. It's entirely too calm outside for that sort of thing. Oh, and your brother. Where has he gone then?"

"I imagine he's fumbling with a formal dinner suit right about now," replied Dean through a highly amused grin. "He's entertaining a lady tonight."

"My, my, didn't take the boy long. Good for him." She stepped aside when Ash the bartender reappeared with Dean's drink and then slid into the conversation again. "And why haven't you found yourself a lady friend too?"

"The dead girls need me more," he replied.

Mrs. Harvelle darkened, even there in the pub lit by poorly cleaned gaslights. "Aye, lad. That they do." A thin white hand touched her forehead, her bosom, and each of her shoulders. "Well then, you'll be needing food to sustain you. No arguing. I'll have my daughter cook up some supper for you."

Dean smiled indulgently and then let his suspicions take her by surprise. "You're not English, are you?"

"What?" The middle-aged woman stilled amidst the chaos of drunken men and bawdy women. "Just what do you think you're getting at here?"

"Well," began Dean, casually sipping his whiskey, "I ain't no English dandy or anything but I can hear your accent shifting around every time I come in here. I can't place where you're really from, of course, but I'm guessing Whitechapel ain't it." He drained his glass as he watched the color drain from her face.

Mrs. Harvelle's gaze darted around the bar, wondering if anyone heard his theory, he guessed. "Upstairs. Now."

The woman grabbed Dean's wrist as she whirled around the bar's corner, nearly catching her bustle on another man's stool, and dragged him toward the stairwell. Narrow and clogged by the traffic of stinking laborers offering up wages to plow Mrs. Harvelle's selection of scantily clad prostitutes, the stairwell seemed darker than the bar floor below. As they ascended, Dean caught blue eyes here or brown eyes there and wondered quietly to himself just how many of them might fall under his attention next in a pool of blood on a filthy street. His thoughts clunked against his skull when Mrs. Harvelle jerked him to the right at the landing, where they weaved through still more leering couples and clumps of threes or fours.

Around a corner and down an empty corridor made Dean realize Harvelle's occupied perhaps the whole of the building rather than just the front of it. She didn't let go of his wrist and he didn't fight her grip. She swung him into an unoccupied bedchamber, much more opulent than the others if he had to estimate it by the comfortable furnishings and taste for crystal. Shutting them in the room, Mrs. Harvelle spun and paced the empty space between the enormous bed and the wardrobe. Apparently Dean unnerved her. His brows furrowed in confusion but he remained silent, since most suspects caught in any rouse wanted to talk, in fact, if they were given the room to do so. He considered sitting on the edge of the bed until he realized Mrs. Harvelle might not have been as common as her neighborhood portrayed. Instead, he drifted to a highback chair near the fireplace, though no fire blazed.

"I donna how ye figured it out, laddie," Mrs. Harvelle muttered, pacing in sweeps of her bustled skirt.

Dean noted the sharp natural brogue in her tongue. It sounded like an intensified, purer version of Five Points, leading him to believe she was Irish posing as an Englishwoman. No one feigned their identities without dark motivations.

She whipped about and bent with a finger pointed inches from his face. "Yer t'say nothin' t'me girl on pain of castration. Don't think I canna do it."

"Miss Jo doesn't know where you're from?" That took him by surprise.

"Jo's of Whitechapel through and through, she is. I followed her da here before she was born. And I put him in the ground here before her first year. She's of England and of England she'll stay, boyo. Ireland's no place for my wee lass." Mrs. Harvelle twisted away from Dean as if a memory caused her horrible pain. Her hand covered her mouth. The pacing resumed. "The truth is Jo canna go back to Ireland and neither can I. It's a dangerous dark place now. It breaks me heart and shatters me soul t'know the evil in me home has come to Whitechapel too."

"What are you saying?" Dean pressed in an even tone. His heart thudded away in his chest, wondering if this was the break in the case that he needed.

Facing him again, she sank to the rug and her bustled skirt pooled around her like a pond. "There was a priest. Called himself Father Crowley. Came to our parish from Killdare, he said, and not a soul thought to question it. Not until it was too late, you see." Her eyes flashed up at him and it gave her the appearance of a young girl rather then a matronly lady who clearly did not belong in a pub like that one. What woman did, really? "Father Crowley brought a Kildare sister with him t'attend t'his person. They called her Rowena in whispers, mind ye, but her religious name was Sister Mary Michael. Not long after their establishment in our wee parish, good Catholic people began turning up killed. Gutted like fish, mind ye."

The dark shadow that fell over her pale pallor looked all-too-familiar to Dean. He knew the face of a woman who carried impossible secrets and impossible loss. "And your husband was one of the dead."

"Not straight away. Me Robert discovered the ghastly act as Father Crowley and Sister Mary Michael slaughtered his own da. The man wasna prince among men at all, o'course, but 'twas the principle of the thing. Robert thought the priest and his nun were after th'sinners among us since th'dead were none but the rot of humanity." She gave Dean a sidelong eye as if knowing he would understand. "Anyhow, boyo, Father Crowley and Sister Mary Michael ran off into the night. I was nearly five months gone with me girl but Robert couldna let 'em get away with the dark deeds. He hunted them bravely through Scotland and the north of England whilst I followed an' me belly swelled."

"The murderous priest and nun ended up here in London then," Dean surmised, "and that's how you got here."

Mrs. Harvelle nodded grimly. "I thought I was better at hidin' me mother tongue." Her attempt at a lighthearted comment came with a feeble smile.

"You are," replied Dean indulgently, "but I'm a good detective. Nothing's meant to escape my notice." Giving her a moment to reflect on her story and to collect her emotions, he took her hand like a friend (and perhaps he did think of himself as a friend) and pressed her to continue. "They killed your husband, didn't they?"

"Aye." Averting her eyes allowed her to conceal the tears that collected along the rim of her lashes. "I thought they would come after my Jo and me, so we blended ourselves with London folk. I taught me girl to believe she was of England so she would never have to lie knowingly should they reappear, which is something I fear deep down in my bones."

Indeed, Dean already had suspicions about the mysterious priest and his nun. "Why did you not tell me of these things sooner?"

"I didna think there was a connection betwixt the poor girls and what befell me Irish home."

Dean's face tilted questioningly.

She backtracked and spoke with a rolling hand motion as if explaining something already known. "The poor departed souls of Ireland were men. The ladies of the night slaughtered on Whitechapel streets are most decidedly not blokes, y'see."

"Mm," Dean hummed with a thoughtful nod.

Murderers, once they established some sort of routine, rarely ventured out of that routine. At least in New York. He wondered, if the monsters were the same people, why they suddenly decided to kill ladies instead of men. Perhaps they determined the women roaming the streets at night plying their wares, so to speak, ranked far higher on the scale of sinful behavior than thieves or husbands with a wandering eye or a fist twitching to beat wives and children. If sin was indeed the motive, then it made sense to rid Whitechapel of soiled doves as if they weren't even human with free will and choices of their own.

Dean's mind reeled with the possibilities. The spinning stopped abruptly upon the image of the corrupted Coptic cross found on each of the victims. It reminded him that he needed to discover whether any possible connections to the Earl of Rothes existed with the Harvelle ladies. He rather doubt it it now that he sat before the poor widow who confessed the loss of her husband to a cause bigger than himself. In fact, Dean wished he could have known that man, known only to him as Robert.

For now, he snatched a used letter cover from a table situated before a window and sketched out the image of the Coptic cross. He made sure to corrupt it with three rings around the top instead of one just as his brother had pointed out the day before.

"Have you ever seen this before?"

Dean showed it to her without handing the sketch over. He didn't want such a thing lying around her business should the priest linger around from time to time without her knowledge. Stranger things had happened in his experience. It was better, he also decided, to keep many of his suspicions to himself for the time being, at least until he could confer with Sam about those sudden developments.

Peering carefully at the sketch, Mrs. Harvelle's eyes widened a fraction of an inch. He knew he'd hit his mark and a flush of excitement blanched his skin. The thrill of the hunt pumped through his veins, whispering teasing remarks of how close he'd gotten, yet still so far from catching the killer.

"Aye," she breathed, astonished. "Twas a symbol embroidered upon Father Crowley's vestments. Where'd ye see such a thing?"

"I'm not at liberty to say just now," Dean said coolly. He took her hands and guided her to her feet again. "If you have a gun, I suggest you keep it with you at all times until this matter is resolved. I don't know how long it will take but I promise you, Mrs. Harvelle, I won't leave English shores without ensuring your safety. Teach Miss Jo what she needs to know to defend herself. Give her a good, sturdy blade if you won't give her a gun and don't let her go out after dark. I'll come again when I have more information for you. Try not to worry."

Slow and full of sorrow, the middle-aged woman smiled up at Dean. "That's just what me husband said."

*****

Swinging through the door to his rented flat once again, Sam held it open for Mrs. Moore. She swept in, laughing and carrying the train of her amethyst colored gown on a loop over her wrist. The light glinted off the luxurious fabric and the luxurious quality of her curly blond hair in equal parts. True, the lady attempted to bind her hair in a careful and elegant chignon, yet Sam still knew it would flow in free curls down her back in private. He just knew it. And it intoxicated him more than the claret flowing through his body at that moment.

"Well, that certainly was a waste of time for the case, wasn't it?" He laughed at himself and shook his head as he took the gunmetal gray cloak from her shoulders. "I am sorry to have dragged you out tonight. If I had known the man I intended to observe was not to show up, I would not have pleaded with you to accompany me."

"Oh? I quite enjoyed myself. I hadn't gone out in society for so long, you know. I forgot how enjoyable life can be." Mrs. Moore peered at the fireplace with a contented smile and her eyes glittered the reflection of the flames.

Sam misspoke himself yet again. He didn't mean to imply that he didn't enjoy dinner with her, because it had been the highlight of his time in London, but he did have a job to do as well. "That reminds me," he said, eager to make it up, "you must close your eyes. Indulge me."

Curiously, Mrs. Moore looked up at his great height. Only brief hesitation gave her pause before her eyelids obediently slipped shut, giving her the look of a sweet porcelain doll.

Around the corner in his bedchamber, Sam had hidden a bundle before they departed earlier in the evening. He meant to give it to her before they left but seeing her wear something brighter than the awful harshness of black left him stunned and breathless. She had bewitched him and tossed any sense of propriety right out of his mind. It was a bit unorthodox, giving it to her after the evening had concluded, but nothing about their slow bond had been traditional thus far.

Sam brought out a bundle of flowers wrapped in wax paper and tied with a lavender bow. When she talked about going into half mourning, he remembered ladies back home in New York wearing purple and gray during that stage. He'd been right in guessing London women observed the same traditions. Buying her a bunch of flowers in various shades of purple, lavender, cream, and small hints of blushing pink seemed lovely to him. He wrapped her hands around the base of the flower bundle while her eyes remained closed. She smiled at feeling something pressed into her hands but obeyed him, not looking before she had leave. Indulging himself, Sam let the moment linger, touching her fingers and memorizing the condors of her face since she could not see him doing it.

"There we are," he finally said barely above a whisper. "Open your eyes."

Mrs. Moore immediately dropped her eyes to the bundle in her hands and gasped in delight. "Oh, how lovely," she cooed sincerely, all pretense of tough widowhood melting away. "Tea roses. Peonies. So beautiful. They're all my favorite flowers. Did you know?" The question brought her gaze up to meet his again.

"No, I didn't know," he replied through a soft smile. "I had intended to give you the flowers earlier but--"

"--You're always thinking about your investigation. I see your mind turning through it every minute of the day," she interjected. The corner of her mouth turned up, perhaps a bit flirtatiously. "Honestly, I found it exhilarating to be included in your work tonight even if we came up empty-handed."

"Not quite empty-handed," Sam corrected as his hands spread over hers holding onto the flower bundle.

Breath hitched in her throat. He saw the delicate bit of skin jump above her collarbones just appearing over the low-cut evening bodice of her gown. It was the moment. He knew it in spite of anxieties plaguing him at every moment, lying to him and telling him she would reject him because he was a glorified, legalized murder himself. Detectives and police killed routinely. It was their jobs. Exposing Mrs. Moore to that life was filled him with all sorts of doubts, nearly paralyzing him in the moment.

Still, his attraction to her overpowered those doubts with just a few discreet breaths. His fingertips toyed with the cuffs of her sleeves, grazing here and there just within, touching delicate skin not exposed for the world to see. She didn't push him away and it emboldened him. One hand rose to her face, nearly swallowing the entire expanse of it in his palm, and she closed her eyes to bend into his advance. His lips brushed her cheekbone as her face nuzzled his hand. She smelled of rosewater on the surface and apothecary mysteries just below that, creating a natural perfume all her own.

"Jessie," he whispered, "will you allow me to--"

The door to the flat flung open wide and Dean strode through with such a purpose that he hadn't noticed the shattered moment between Sam and Mrs. Moore.

"We gotta get to as many Catholic churches as we can hit tomorrow, Sammy," announced Dean as he rifled through their files on the desk. "We got a big break in the case. I think I know who our killer is. I just don't know why yet but I'm on it."

Mrs. Moore's silent gaze tracked Dean through the flat but Sam was not so content to remain quiet. Still touching one of her hands, he cleared his throat and spoke his brother's name.

"What?" Dean finally looked their way. "Oh. OH! I'm sorry. I'll make myself scarce then. Carry on. I was never here."

"No, it's not necessary," she murmured.

Sam protested privately. "Jessie...."

She fixed a smile on her face, plumping her cheeks, and drawing from the warm color in her skin. "I should retire to bed for the evening. I shall leave you gentlemen to your work. Do let your brother rest a little, Detective Winchester." She gave Sam's hand a light squeeze as she asked Dean to let him rest.

Dean nodded politely. "G'night, Mrs. Moore."

Sam glared once she shut the door, leaving the brothers alone together.


	10. Chapter 10

September 30, 1888

London, like New York, never fully settled into quiet even at--what time was it?--after midnight. The building Jessie owned was solidly built and kept out street noise but that only worked if Dean kept the windows shut, which he never did. Sam hardly ever slept clean through the night no matter where he laid his head anyway, though he would have liked the distraction of unconsciousness.

The promise of roast guinea fowl from the night before last lured Sam down dark stairwells to the kitchen cellar, led only by a single taper candle. As he dropped off the candle on the corner of the kitchen table, he made his way straight for the ice box--an odd contraption he'd known about for years but never lived with before--and poked around for the plate wrapped in a checked cloth. He didn't eat so much meat back home in New York but there seemed to be an abundance of fowl, venison, and fish while living temporarily in London. The stove fire burned low and he kindled new flames to heat up his late-night feast.

"Let me do that for you."

Sam flew upright from crouching before the stove fire, his heart jammed into his throat. "What?"

He spun around and found Jessie Moore sitting at the table. Long curly blonde hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back entranced him for a moment until she stood. A dove gray wrapper nipped in at her waist and showed the natural slender shape of her body without corsets, bustles, and layers upon layers of undergarments. The collar of her ivory nightgown peeked out from beneath her wrapper. He just knew there wasn't anything under those flimsy layers of fabric--a truth that made him lick his lips, swallow hard, and avert his eyes. If she knew the effect she had on him, he'd be mortified beyond repair. No, he wasn't innocent and he had bedded women before but damn it....

"Sam," interjected Jessie through his rambling thoughts.

His body jerked. "What?" Oh hell, he felt like an imbecile.

The corners of Jessie's mouth curved upward and her head angled. Was that flirtation?

"I ... uh ... I didn't know anyone was down here. I'm sorry." The growing fire in the open stove door made his back sweat and made him realize just how inappropriately nude he was standing there in his drawers. "I'm ... uh ... sorry."

"You said that," she replied with a hint of laughter edging her tone.

"Sorry." Damn it! "Uh ... so ... are you well, then? You're not falling ill, are you?"

Jessie's feet were bare. He spotted sweet little toes poking out from beneath the hem of her wrapper as she slid closer, maneuvering around him to tend to the stove. "I'm fine," she said. "Why wouldn't I be?" She pulled the checkered cloth off the plate of guinea fowl and clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. "Good Lord. Why is it you men never know how to fix a proper plate for yourselves? You need more than just a roast bird to sustain you."

"I...." He didn't have a clever response so he didn't try. Instead, he opted for honesty. "I didn't peg you as someone haunted by dreams at night like I am."

Back turned and shoulders hunched over the stove, she made a noncommittal sound. "We're all haunted by something, I think. There's death in the air and I don't like it. I don't know how anyone can sleep as if those poor girls aren't in danger. Who's to say the fiend won't turn his trade upon the ladies in my part of the city?"

"I won't let anything happen to you, Jessie."

A moment of hesitation seized Sam but he let himself touch her, draping his large hands over her elegantly thin shoulders. She stilled under his hands and let the green beans spill haphazardly into a pot. He became acutely aware of a thousand little details in that moment. Blonde waves curled down her back. A faint scent of rosewater punctuated the savory aromas of reheated supper. Somewhere in the kitchen, a clock ticked away the seconds of silence falling between them. But when she turned and faced him, the focus settled upon the shining tears in her eyes, brightening the color--something not quite blue, not quite gray, and not quite silver, yet wholly her own. She was far from a fragile flower after living alone in widowhood and managing an apothecary, yet she let her insecurity bleed through without reservation for Sam as if reaching out to him.

"I promise," he said softly, light touches feathering her chin and her cheeks, "you're safe with me. We've got a lead on the killer. It'll be over soon if my brother and I have anything to say about it."

"You could be saying that just to reassure a mere woman in distress. I don't know if I should believe what you say. I've believed men before and--"

The impulse took Sam by surprise. He clutched Jessie's face, bending to her feminine height from his overly tall stature, and captured her lips in his. Glimmers of salty tears passed between their tongues and Sam absorbed her fear and sorrow into himself in ways she couldn't comprehend. No one did, just like no one understood or guessed at his power in touching things and seeing stories connected to them. Touching Jessie unsettled him as he sensed her confused, conflicted emotions, yet her arms slid around his shoulders until it felt like a woman clinging to a gaslight in a hurricane. He drank in her darkness and stowed it away deep inside where his lived. He could tolerate the weight of fear, melancholy, and isolation. She couldn't.

And as one of Sam's hands passed down her curving shapes to around her waist and the other combed the blonde curls crowning her head, a sweet, breathy moan ascended from Jessie's throat. One little sound ignited the kind of urgency in Sam that made him throw past women against walls, pull their hair, and plow into their well-used bodies until their heads tipped back and they howled. He couldn't make himself use Jessie that way, though his thin cotton drawers hanging low on his hips gave no illusions about how she affected him.

Sam broke away, embarrassed, and turned his back to the lovely disheveled creature. Catching a glimpse of erect nipples through the thin layers of her nightclothes as he spun around did nothing to help his condition either. He stammered out flustered apologies as he jammed the heel of his hand against his protruding, agitated flesh, silently praying for it to go down in a hurry.

"There's no need for apologies now. I wanted to be kissed as much as you wanted to kiss," she said rather softly without even a hint of making fun or disgust.

His laughter stuttered awkwardly and he wanted to punch himself. "Of course, but...."

Jessie drew nearer. It was her turn then to lay her hands over his shoulders. The soft skin of her palms and fingers stretching over his naked back gave him a moment of peace in his mind but not his body. She came closer and rested her tearful cheek on his bare skin.

"I wish you'd stop treating me like I don't know what a man and a woman are meant for, Sam. I have been married, you know." She managed to say such a wicked thing, in his estimation, with such a sweet whisper that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for salacious. Her hands fell to his waistline, allowing her to fully embrace him from behind. "I wasn't sure until now, you see, what you thought of me. I couldn't bear a simple polite acquaintance much longer."

"Me either," Sam admitted, touching her hands folded around his waist.

"You're a magnificent man but must know how difficult it is for me to say so. If you hadn't kissed me just now, I wouldn't have ever found the courage."

"Well, there's where you're wrong." Sam reached around and pulled her into his arms. "You're courageous, all right. My profession frightens away all other women, but here you are, willing to help me investigate. I feel your faith in me too." His fingertips grazed her eyelashes, the curve of her cheek, and the tip of her nose. "I didn't want you to feel used just now, to feel like ... like...."

"Like one of the dead women in their profession," she murmured.

"Yes," Sam murmured gravely. "My desire for you isn't a fleeting moment. It's--"

"--Consuming--"

"--Enduring--"

"--Real." Jessie smiled up at Sam, the truth of it in her eyes.

Sam's head bowed until his forehead rested upon hers, wanting nothing more than to take her in that moment, but she might regret knowing him by the time it was all said and done. There was so much she didn't know about him. Unwelcome thoughts invaded as his fingers laced together in a knot over the small of her back, holding her close to his body. His powers thrummed in his skull trying to read her no matter how ardently he fought that intrusion. He struggled to control his second sight when his emotions were so undone. If he opened himself to making love that night, Jessie would certainly find out what he could do, the unnatural thing inside his brain. Aside from the obvious point of not being married, he simply wasn't ready to risk her rejection yet. So he closed his eyes, breathed the rosewater on her skin, and held her as close as he dared.

Her fingers grazed his stubble. "You're not coming to bed with me tonight, hm?"

The sensation of her natural shape in his hands without the barrier of a corset enticed him but he shook his head. "You must be certain. We're not married. I know you've been married before and you're not ... inexperienced ... but I couldn't live with myself if you regretted ... us ... in the end." His thumbs caressed her waistline as he held her close. "We have time."

"You don't know that." Jessie's face drooped. "Those poor butchered women all believed they had more time to right the wrongs in their lives."

"I know."

Meeting his eyes again, Jessie's fingertips pushed his shaggy hair away from his temples and combed it behind his ears. He kissed the tip of her nose. They seemed to enjoy the quiet privacy growing into comfortable, intimate silence between them as they touched and learned each other.

"I won't let you get hurt," Sam vowed solemnly. Whether he meant by himself or by the killer people were calling Leather Apron, he didn't know for certain.

"Of course not," she whispered, "because I'm going to be there helping you every step of the way. And you, my dear, will stop treating me like a fragile crystal vase to be packed away on some shelf and ignored." She grasped his chin in a firm claw and held his eyes. "You'll not pass me over like other women. I'm not to be petted and praised for meaningless things."

"Of course not," Sam replied.

Jessie nodded slowly as if arriving at some internal truth. "I'm as strong as steel and you're the fire that will forge me."

Breathing deep, Sam clutched her waist tighter still. "What would I do without you?"

Jessie's smile shifted to something lopsided and sweet. "Crash and burn." And then she rose up on her toes, kissing him ardently. Her voice gave way to a low whisper. "My door is never closed to you, Sam Winchester."

*****

Of course Dean heard Sam fumble his way through the dark in the next room and leave their flat but he didn't bother getting up to see what was the matter. They each usually left the other alone to their nocturnal devices, which was a long-existing unwritten rule stretching back to when their father was still alive.

Dean remained lying in bed for more than an hour, enjoying the silence. Perhaps "enjoying" wasn't the right word so much as enduring it. He hated what the night brought--all of the questions, the doubts, and the faces of the slaughtered girls. His mind traipsed between problems. Sometimes it was Castiel's face that plagued him but batting away that most desired creature only opened his thoughts to the truth that he hadn't captured the killer yet. It wasn't Dean's way to let a murderous madman run the streets free that long and he counted it as a failure.

The possibility of discovering the killer's identity through Ellen Harvelle gave him some direction, though, and he already had the Catholic churches mapped out in his mind. He'd start close by and spread the perimeter from there, reaching the outer limits of the city's borders. If the killer returned to his home base after each murder, which Dean suspected, he couldn't take the trains or hire carriages without being noticed, so he worked on the assumption that he lived within walking distance of Whitechapel.

Of course, Dean had been over the details in his mind on a never-ending loop. He caught the scent of his target like a predator hunting prey and he didn't even send word to Castiel yet. He couldn't risk word getting out. Just as he knew the killer's days were numbered, he also knew he wouldn't sleep until they found him. Obsession settled in his chest.

The door to the flat burst open like a gunshot, making Dean scramble for his own revolver on the bedside table.

"Dean! Get up!" It was Sam, banging around his room and slamming chest drawers.

Throwing off his blankets, Dean sprang out of bed and vaulted across the room to his suit flung over the corner chair. He nearly strode into the drawing room to ask his brother what the ruckus was but the distinct feminine voice through the wall stopped him. Sleeping in the nude with a strange woman living in the same house was a hazardous thing. Dean tugged his suit on in such a hurry that he nearly jammed on his trousers backwards and his jacket inside out. Only one thing made Sam use that dark, commanding tone of voice in the past: a huge development in the case.

A copper clutching a lantern greeted Dean in the drawing room wearing such a pale and vacant expression that Dean understood. "Another victim?"

"A pair of them, sir," he replied gravely.

His brows shot up. "Who sent for us?"

"I believe...." The copper struggled with his lantern as he dug a slip of paper out of his pocket. "Yes, here it is. Miss Jo Harvelle by request of her mother, Mrs. Ellen Harvelle. I believe Miss Harvelle witnessed something. The girl's in a right undone state, sir."

"Sammy! Let's go!" Dean had no idea what was happening but if Ellen and Jo summoned a police officer to collect them, it had to be dreadful.

The young widow emerged from Sam's room in silence with her hair completely undone and wearing a soft gray housecoat over a white nightgown. That brought up one of Dean's eyebrows again. A thousand questions filled his his mind the moment he spotted Sam's gun holster in her hands, something he never allowed anyone to touch. She flipped open the cylinder, spun it as if counting the bullets, and slammed it home again. Clearly the lady had experience with weapons but Dean couldn't get past her touching his brother's possessions so intimately to question why. She placed the revolver on the fireplace mantle and gave her attention to examining Sam's holster.

"Sammy!" shouted Dean again.

"He's coming," blonde Mrs. Moore replied calmly.

As if she'd sensed it, Sam rushed out of his room still wrestling his braces over his shoulders. They moved together seamlessly as if something unspoken and understood removed all polite pretense. Sam lifted his arms as Mrs. Moore secured the holster belt around his waist. Then she slid the revolver into its leather holster the way a person checked and rechecked something precious when they were uncertain of safety.

"Be careful," she whispered with her hands on his chest.

"We'll catch him," he replied.

Finally, for crying out loud, Dean and Sam departed into the night with the copper leading them to the southeast region of Whitechapel. Dean couldn't be bothered to question his brother about the obvious change in his relationship with the widow, not two corpses demanded justice.

Commercial Street resembled most of the rough areas of Whitechapel, which didn't surprise Dean, but he was surprised the victim lay so close to a public building. Even at the zenith of night, the poor girl managed to attract a crowd held back by a few London coppers. Sam strode ahead, determined as always to put out an air of authority, though it was not technically their case. They were private detectives hired by the Earl of Rothes, not Scotland Yard. Elbowing his way through impoverished gawkers, Sam sliced his way through the sour stench of unwashed bodies, and Dean followed close behind.

Dean's study of Whitechapel told him the two story wooden, barn-like building was the International Worker's Educational Club. He read that the spacious club had a capacity of over two hundred people before a stage. Amateurs performed plays by Russian revolutionists. On weekend evenings, Russian, Jewish, British, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish radicals gathered and the members thought of the club as the "cradle of Liberty" for the worker's manumission.

She lay still and cold in Dutfield's Yard outside of the club. Ghoulish people strained their necks for looks and ears for clues about what the police officers discussed around her body. Dean immediately memorized the scene as he crouched at her feet. Her head pointed toward the building's wall, encased in a black crepe bonnet thrown askew, and her feet pointed toward the street. A packet of cachous lay in her left hand, which extended out from her body, and that told Dean of how she'd been taken by surprise. Her legs seemed drawn up slightly and he wondered if she'd crumpled as she fell or if the attacker attempted rape. Even so, warmth still exuded from her skin and Dean touched the stocking over her ankle so his brother wouldn't have to do it. She hadn't been dead long. An hour, maybe two.

"Diemschutz indicated his horse got skittish like there was still somebody out here when he pulled in his wagon."

"Any witnesses?"

"Just the barmaid girl thus far. Officers are going door to door as we speak"

"Good. Where is she?"

Dean only half-listened to Sam questioning another copper while he examined the body. The ease with which they had access to the murder scene suggested Castiel had interviewed on their behalf at some point, but he pushed that question aside.

He stepped around the blood congealing on the ground and crouched at her head. She wore a long fur-trimmed black coat, a black skirt, and a chocolate brown velveteen bodice. Rather simple, dark clothes easily concealing her in the night, yet some of her things seemed of slightly better quality than some of the women wandering Whitechapel streets. That victim hadn't always been a soiled dove ignored by society, used by men, and left to die by violence or disease.

As he pulled back the silk handkerchief tied around her neck, he noted the bloody gash across her throat. The killer had sliced through her handkerchief, he reasoned, near a right angle of her jaw. His use of the blade deviated downwards just slightly as if he'd taken her in one sudden motion that she never expected.

Sam appeared and crouched at Dean's side, looking over the body. He reached for the pooling blood between his feet.

"Wait, you sure?" whispered Dean sharply.

"Have you seen the mark?" Sam asked, referring to the corrupt Coptic cross slashed into the other victims.

Dean shook his head.

With a determined nod, Sam's fingertips touched the drying blood drained from the woman's throat and his eyes fell closed. Immediately Dean regretted asking Sam to use his second sight on the case at all because the obligation propelled him to keep doing it no matter the cost to his own body. He did his best to shield Sam from prying eyes with the broadness of his shoulders, and luckily, officers and detectives seemed more occupied with talking among themselves than giving attention to the poor dead woman. Sam jerked and twitched, his face tight with the tension of holding in his vision and keeping his second sight secret.

A minute or two later, he opened his eyes again. He wiped the blood from his fingertips on the ground without saying a word, though Dean knew he'd seen the woman alive and that always made Sam a bit unhinged. The younger brother touched her shoulder tenderly as if he'd known her. He sat that way for a moment, meditating on a life cut short, and only blood slithering from his nose brought his attention back to reality. He scrambled for the handkerchief in his pocket before anyone noticed his nosebleed, which almost always happened when he used his second sight.

"Hey," Dean addressed the coppers as he stood, "where'd you stash the Harvelle girl?"

They eyed him with cocked heads and no recognition.

"The barmaid," he said, trying again.

"Oh!" one of them replied. "Got her 'round the next block stowed in a borrowed room with her mum. Already been questioned."

"Right. My partner and I would like to question her ourselves," said Dean.

Suddenly on his feet and looking better than Dean anticipated, Sam resumed his air of command. "I'll go look at the other body. You go talk with Miss Harvelle."

"You sure?"

He nodded. "Killer didn't finish his work. That's why there's a second victim."

A copper poked his head into their conversation, brows raised. "Sorry, what you say, chap? Killer didn't finish? She looks right dead to me."

"Her body hasn't been mutilated like the others," Sam explained impatiently.

Dean left his brother with the scattered police force and got directions to the building where they held the Harvelle women. They obviously hadn't given them much consideration because the narrow window in that fourth floor room overlooked the murder scene. He shook his head as he came into the room and saw they'd only been left with a candle on a table dividing two chairs. While Miss Jo stiffly occupied one, Mrs. Harvelle paced angrily in the shadows.

"Mum, I'm fine! I'm not hurt! I didn't even see Elizabeth get attacked!" shouted Miss Jo.

"Why were you even out after midnight in the first place?" Mrs. Harvelle shouted back.

"Uh...." Dean interrupted. "Ladies?"

They both looked his way, one relieved and the other in the fever of maternal guardianship. Miss Jo hopped to her feet, smiling at him, with her large bustle swaying as she approached him. He noted the cold fear in her eyes and understood the false bravado in her smile, greeting him as cheerfully as a garden party. She was in shock.

"Hello, Miss Jo," he said, grasping one of her hands. Just as he guessed, her skin was freezing cold and her fingers trembled. He made sure to adopt a soft voice. "I heard you've had a difficult night. Sit down with me--" glancing at the tigress in her mother, "--and Mrs. Harvelle will take a deep breath. We're going to talk everything over together. I can see you're unhurt but let's not put the horse before the cart. Let's all of us sit down now."

Miss Jo obeyed but it took Mrs. Harvelle a moment to get herself under control. The chairs Dean left for the women, choosing instead to sit on the corner of the table.

"The police tell me you witnessed something to do with the murder. What did you call her? Elizabeth?"

"Elizabeth Stride, yes," Miss Jo replied. She darkened, suggesting she knew the victim. "She's been staying at the lodging house on Flower Street. Um ... I think ... she said something to me the day before yesterday about quarreling with her man and that was why she was at the lodging house." The girl shook her head as if refuting a claim Dean hadn't yet made. "She wasn't a prostitute, sir. That is to say she's been forced into that life before but we were trying to keep her earnings by legitimate means such as sewing, charring, and her man sometimes provided for her too. Only in her most desperate moments was she subject to selling herself."

"Who was her man?" Dean asked.

"Michael Kidney. They both drink, of course. I'm afraid her suffering made her dependent upon the bottle and she frequently appeared before the Thames Magistrate Court." Eyes turned up to Dean's face. "She wasn't an evil woman. None of them were but the papers and the police won't see them."

Dean nodded as he took a leather notepad from his jacket and took notes. "I know. Why were you out tonight then?"

"Well, I...." A deep sigh seemed to center Miss Jo again. "I was working the pub tonight. Mum had one of her headaches, so I stepped in for her. It was busy on account of people coming in out of the cold and we ran out of the dark German ale. It's a moneymaker. I wanted to impress Mum, so I went out after half past eleven, I believe, to see if there were more barrels to buy. I was turning onto Berner Street from Commercial Road, and having gotten as far as the gateway where the murder was committed, apparently, I saw a man stop and speak to a woman who stood in the gateway. I recognized her as Elizabeth by the fur trim on her coat, which I had seen a few days ago, so I stopped to look. The man tried to pull her into the street, but he turned her round and threw her down on the footway and Elizabeth screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, I saw a second man lighting his pipe. The man who threw Elizabeth down called out, apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road, Lipski, and then I walked away. I was afraid. I felt watched as I left and I realized I was being followed by the second man, so I ran as far as the railway arch, but the man did not follow so far."

"Is that everything you saw?" Dean asked, stoic, but knowing she very likely witnessed the very murderer they hunted.

Miss Jo nodded and drifted into the fog of shock again.

"Trying to impress me. I swear." It wasn't easily discernable whether Mrs. Harvelle was angry or flooded with relief that her child hadn't been killed too.

Underlining important clues in his notes, Dean then asked: "Can you give me a description of the man you saw push Ms. Stride?"

"It was dark," she replied, hesitating.

"Not to worry. Anything will help us," assured Dean.

Miss Jo nodded and pressed her fingertips to her brow. She wanted so much to be fearless--that much was evident--but knowing people and having them die left and right seemed to wear her down too. "The man was no younger than thirty. I think he was much older, in fact, but I'm not certain. He was about five feet, five inches tall, maybe a little more, with a fresh complexion, dark hair, and a small brown mustache. It might have been a thin beard all over but it ... it was just so dark. He was dressed in a dark overcoat and an old black felt hat with a wide brim."

"Great. Perfect. Good job. You're helping us a lot, Miss Jo." He scribbled quickly.

It wasn't a thrilling murderous hunt for her and he had to remind himself of that fact as her eyes downturned. Mrs. Harvelle rubbed warmth back into her nearest hand. She ceased trembling, purged by telling her story to someone who mattered.

"Is it true there's another dead lady?" she asked in a small voice.

Dean considered keeping it from her but the girl was too clever to buy his stories. He hesitated but nodded. "Yeah, my brother's gone to investigate the scene."

Silence fell and Miss Jo's head drooped in sorrow. "I suppose the sun's on its way. The mortician will be taking their poor bodies soon. That's it for them. It's over." She chewed her bottom lip and fought back tears, ever the fighter. "Detective, this has to stop. I don't know why it's happening. I can't make sense of it. Our own police behave as if our women are killing themselves and people outside of Whitechapel only care about the sensation. Make it stop, for the sake of all our girls."

"We will," Dean promised. "We're working as hard as we can."

*****

Blinded by pain, Sam stumbled his way back to the apothecary building before the sun rose higher than London's cityscape. Streaking drops of blood splattered down his shirtfront from his nose. He pressed the handkerchief to his nose, of course, but it had already soaked through. Using his second sight twice in one night pushed him nearly beyond his endurance and frayed him at the edges.

Valuable information came through the fresh corpses though. That, he couldn't deny.

He found the back entrance through the throbbing around his skull and avoided the shop floor altogether. It was too early for customers but he couldn't risk running into the chemist who worked for Jessie. Too many questions about a stumbling man with a bloody nose would reflect badly on her.

The narrow back stairwell materialized in shadowy dawn light, drawing Sam upstairs. He took the stairs in uneven numbers around the back of a delivery bay where wagons routinely brought parcels and crates of chemicals, supplies, and other oddities to the apothecary. He stumbled upstairs, above the shop and below his rented rooms, making his way around the corridors sometimes only by feeling with his hands. If he didn't find a bed soon, he'd vomit all over Jessie's expensive hall rug. The curse of the second sight made his brain feel like it would shatter his skull and kill him. Perhaps someday it would.

Sam found Jessie's door--either that or he pounded on the washroom door--and mumbled around his handkerchief that he needed her.

In moments the door flung open and her wide eyes greeted him with horror. She wore only her white nightgown, having obviously been asleep, and he held out his hand to keep his distance. He didn't want to get his blood all over her.

"What the bloody hell happened to you?" Jessie screeched.

"I...." How could he begin to explain his second sight? "Is my brother back yet?"

"Never mind. Get in here. Let me have a look at the mess you've made of yourself."

Jessie tugged him by the hand and steered him to one of her overstuffed drawing room chairs. She rushed about, gathering a pitcher of cold water, a basin, rags, and several bottles of her little concoctions he never asked about but always healed his headaches faster than letting them go unattended. It didn't seem that Dean was afoot. He guessed his brother was still out chasing leads, having expected the crippling headache to handicap Sam's ability to follow.

"Pull your hand away," ordered Jessie, bending over his face. "Come on, let me see. Pull it away." She touched the bridge of his nose and tested the structure here and there. "Well, it's not broken."

"That's good," he mumbled, though he already knew it.

"It's your headaches, I think. You weren't struck upon the face," she theorized.

"You'd be correct."

Jessie's mouth twisted to one side in a crinkled line of consternation. "Every time you get called away to a murder scene, you return with these bloody noses and horrifying headaches."

He said nothing. She drew closer than others had in the past to the pattern.

"Was it our fiend?" she asked darkly.

"Yes." He chose not to elaborate.

Jessie nodded, growing pensive as she held his head back and pinched his nose to stop the blood flow. And though her expression seemed hard and unfeeling, the thumb of her hand cradling the back of his neck gently caressed the sensitive skin beneath his ear. It lulled him into quiet but not quite peace--not so long as the killer wandered free somewhere out there.

"We got a witness this time," Sam told her softly, privately. "I think we're close."

"When you find him," said Jessie in perfect evenness, "you kill him."


	11. Chapter 11

It got to him. Rusty, dried blood ringed the cuff of Dean's crisp, white shirt and stained his hand but the dark color of his coat hid most of it. Part of him wanted to put the blood on display once he left Whitechapel, to show London what evils befell their discarded women. He resented the merry little tunes produce and flower vendors whistled as they set up their carts for the day. Yes, it got to him. The blood of those poor dead women splattered his shirt and hand. He'd helped the coroner remove the last body. Dean may have been a veteran copper and detective but what those women suffered would give him nightmares for the remainder of his life.

The Portland stone mansion loomed before Dean in the early morning sunlight as he stood at the gate trying to pull himself together. It wouldn't bode well for an expert detective brought all the way from New York to crumble under the horrors of one murderer. He took a breath, stuck his bloody hand in his pocket, and made his way to the door.

A pudgy butler not completely awake yet answered Dean's pounding with a brass knocker. "Good morning, sir," he said in an utterly detached, formal tone.

"Morning," Dean replied, far more aware of his casual American mannerisms. "Is the Earl up and at 'em yet?"

"His Lordship is presently engaged at breakfast in his private rooms. Please come indoors and wait in the drawing room whilst I inform His Lordship of your presence." The pudgy butler opened the door wider and never completely shed his perturbed expression as Dean slid past him into the grand foyer.

The empty drawing room seemed more cavernous and cold without people sipping port and chatting in low tones as they had when Dean endured a formal dinner there. He tugged self-consciously on his bloody sleeve and regretted not asking the butler if he could was up before seeing Castiel. On the other hand, he still tasted the anger in the back of his throat of a man enraged by how London's discarded women were being slaughtered. Castiel needed to see the blood firsthand, he decided. Looking down at his ruined shirt sleeve poking out from within his jacket somehow made the garment sacred, as if the blood of the impoverished and forgotten was the same as the blood of the martyrs.

Dean's eyes lifted to the wall of windows to his left. It looked to be another cloudy day soon. Off in the distance, gloom rolled toward London, probably bringing more rain with it and destroying more evidence at the murder scenes. His brother entered his thoughts in that moment and he altered his plans, resolving to stop at their flat before taking on every Catholic priest in the city that he could find. He knew Sam suffered every time he used his second sight. Guilt swept through his chest again, making him resolve to beg Sam to stop using his secret ability for his own health.

"Sir, if you'll just follow me, please."

The butler's voice cut through Dean's quiet moment. He turned, nodding, and accompanied the butler on his trek upstairs. Dean had been there before among the enormous, heavy furnishings meant to convey wealth and power along with fashionability. The fashion, of course, was because of the lady of the house. She seemed to like furniture stained with such dark chemicals that much of the pieces looked black. Contrast came with colored woven rugs beneath Dean's feet and splashes of flowers in soft watery shades on every sideboard, shelf, and table. The light and the dark coexisted in the same house but never quite blended together in Dean's eyes. It was like one butted up against the other and fought for dominance over the space.

Passing the private office Dean had seen before, the butler led him to a neighboring room that he guessed must have been connected. The butler quietly entered with an unobtrusive knock and announced Dean as formally as bringing him into a ball. As soon as Dean ducked through the door, he realized what spread before him was a bedchamber done in dark woods, greens, and so much open space. The private sanctuary sensation of it all nearly knocked Dean backwards, right down to the waistcoat abandoned and crumbled on a chair beneath paintings of long dead soldiers and aristocrats. The centerpiece in the wall of portraits was a massive painting of an armored soldier poised to plunge a weighty sword into a black demon creature's chest. Upon looking closer, Dean noticed a pair of grand wings emerging from the warrior's shoulders. He was an angel. It struck Dean as bizarre, having not expected Castiel to succumb to such sappy concepts as religion.

"Thank you, Darty."

Dean followed the voice to the opposite wall from the cluster of paintings to a row of windows. There Castiel sat at a round table displaying quite a breakfast spread of muffins, breads, poached eggs, coffees and teas. Most of it appeared untouched with the exception of a steaming cup of coffee on top of a folded newspaper.

The door clicked shut behind Dean, leaving him alone in Castiel's bedchamber with the man himself and a house full of servants probably gossiping at that very moment. Castiel rose from his chair at the breakfast table and his cool mask fell away to reveal his pleasure at Dean's unexpected appearance.

"Good morning, Dean," he said with a quiet smile as he brought a linen napkin to his lips, though it didn't look like he ate anything.

"Hey," Dean replied awkwardly. He loathed how look it took for him to gain his footing around that beautiful man. It just wasn't his way to feel exposed. He was the smooth one, the one who could talk a girl out of her skirt or a guy out of his trousers in ten minutes flat when properly motivated. Around Castiel, however, it took his brain entirely too long to catch up with his mouth and he hated that new facet of his personality.

A faint, knowing smile twitched Castiel's plump mouth. "Coffee? Tea?" he asked, extending a long hand over the table spread.

"Coffee, yeah. Thanks. If you don't mind."

A more obvious smile arrived on Castiel's mouth but his presence remained soft and warm. "I don't mind, Dean. I'd hoped to see you again soon. Now here you are. Please come and sit with me."

Rounding the table to pull out another chair, it became evident that Castiel wore a dark blue damask robe that tied at the waist and stretched to mid-calf but, Dean noticed, it didn't appear that he wore a stitch of clothing underneath it. He'd rolled out of that enormous bed just over there completely nude and tossed the robe around his body. Guilty over the image, Dean swallowed. The sight of strong legs shaped well in athleticism made Dean avert his eyes to Castiel's face. He focused hard on the task that brought him there. He accepted the offered chair and busied his hands with preparing his own cup of coffee as Castiel slid into his chair once more.

Dean sipped his coffee, happy for the scalding temperature because it grounded him in more important matters than Castiel's sleepy hair and naked collarbones. He took a second fortifying drink. Yes, it was better coffee than he could buy in Five Points and he needed a few crates sent home. The idea of going home, however, suddenly dredged up conflicting emotions that he batted away as soon as they appeared.

"You're injured," blurted Castiel suddenly.

"Uh...." Dean followed his eyes to the bloody state of his arm resting on his thigh, the mess momentarily forgotten. "Oh, that. No, I'm not hurt. It's ... uhm ... it's a victim. I walked here from--"

"--The two dead girls overnight in Whitechapel," said Castiel over him, immediate regret in his voice. All of the stiff formality causing tension between them broke as Castiel grasped his wrist and examined the crusted mess and the ruined shirt sleeve. "I take it you haven't found the culprit yet if you've turned up on my doorstep covered in blood with such a grim countenance. Were they very awful? The murder sites?" Intimacy possessed him and he turned Dean's hand over, palm up, and traced his thumb over the dried blood. "I never rest anymore, wondering if these girls suffer in their last moments or if they're ripped from their earthly concerns in an instant."

At least there Dean could put him at ease. "The killer doesn't seem interested in torturing live victims. I don't think they knew what was coming. Victims bleed to death in moments when their throat arteries are cut. I think it's gotta be like a second of pain and then drifting off to sleep."

"The mutilations happen after death?" asked Castiel as if seeking reassurance upon his conscience than new information.

"I believe so," Dean replied quietly.

Castiel glanced at Dean directly but still held onto his hand. "What about you then? You're pale, Dean."

That was the moment when Dean could have asserted his bravado and presented the strength of the ideal New York City detective. It was the man the Earl of Rothes hired. It was the man the killer known in the newspapers as Leather Apron needed to fear. Yet as he sat at such a lovely breakfast table with Castiel lightly caressing his hand through the dried blood of a poor murdered woman, it felt like such an abominable lie to wear the detective mask.

"You're unwell," Castiel supposed.

"I'm tired," admitted Dean barely above a whisper, "and I have a dead woman's blood on my body and clothes. I don't really know why I'm here either. I should be out hitting the streets and picking up my leads but...."

"But you haven't slept in more than a day and night, I'd wager." There was no malice in Castiel's observation--only concern. "What sort of leads have you found then, detective?"

They were still linked by hands as they talked, yet it didn't strike Dean as peculiar. Instead, it felt natural. He swiped another mouthful from his coffee cup with his free hand. "I met a woman in Whitechapel sometime ago. A widow with a daughter and she lost her husband by the hand of who I believe to be the killer we hunt now. The killer appears to be a priest or posing as one. He was killing people in Ireland and Scotland before making his way here. Seems like he's after sinful people."

Castiel paused and narrowed his eyes, probably pondering such implications if Dean guessed. "Who is this woman, you say?"

"Harvelle," replied Dean.

Something flashed in Castiel's eyes, just there, briefly, but it was gone again before Dean could pinpoint it. His observant sensibilities begged to question the Earl about that look and whether perhaps he'd heard of that family, but he was hesitant to break their intimacy. Asking questions that morning meant crossing the line into a detective interrogating a person of interest, so to speak, which rubbed Dean in every wrong way. He was just so exhausted that morning. If he was meant to question the man before him, the man who hired him in the first place, then he needed his four hours of solid sleep. Even then, part of him resisted thinking of what brought out that flash of ... something ... in Castiel's bright blue eyes.

"Do you know them?" That was the only question he managed in the moment.

Castiel nodded. "I invest in several Whitechapel businesses."

That took Dean by surprise and he raised up in his chair a fraction of an inch. "Is that why you hired me? To protect your investments?"

"Yes, but not for the awful sin of a reason you're thinking," he replied. It seemed to amuse him that Dean automatically jumped to greed and corruption, even within the confines of their budding union. "I invest in less advantaged communities to help the people make a living as much as they can. In the process of choosing which businesses in which to invest, I've been introduced to countless families approaching destitution. They're not bad people by virtue of being poor. I've come to care for many of them. I feel it's the duty of the privileged to funnel our resources to places where people struggle, not in charity, but investments that aid them in living beyond the evil claw of poverty around their hearts and minds."

"I see." Dean felt bad for thinking the worst.

Seeing his expression, Castiel offered a patient smile and squeezed his hand. "I don't know the Harvelle's personally but I did invest in the widow's pub last year."

"Did you know any of the victims?"

"No, but they deserve justice nonetheless."

"That they do." A dark, reflective mood came over Dean and clouded his countenance as he thought of the corpses he'd just handled overnight. Before his own voice registered in his mind, he began speaking softly and releasing the tension in the core of his body. "Seeing their vacant eyes.... When someone dies, a cloud comes over their eyes and it's eerie. I wonder, when I'm studying the scene, if there really is a peaceful place for them to go or if those poor women just get trapped in the seconds before they die forever. How can I make it right for them besides taking this scoundrel and slashing him across the throat myself? Does it really matter if the killer gets caught? It won't bring back those wasted lives and they won't get another chance to claw their way out of the slums. It's all looking very futile in the light of morning."

Bending, Castiel's lips lowered to the palm of Dean's hand and lightly kissed him there. "It's not futile. You and your brother are their voices now. They won't be forgotten because you're working to bring them justice."

"You're an idealist," said Dean through a half-smile.

"I'm rather practical, I'm afraid." His own half-smile appeared as he rubbed Dean's hand between both of his. "I hired you because I suspected you had a heart."

Languid warmth spread through Dean's hand as Castiel rubbed in careful circles. He leaned back in his chair against all polite decorum demanding a properly straight posture. "You couldn't know something like that without meeting me," he said in a teasing tone, believing Castiel was teasing him. It grew easier to smile the more that lovely man touched the bloody source of his stress and Dean momentarily considered accusing him of sorcery.

"Oh, I know," Castiel replied. "Does the Pearl Lipschitz case ring any bells?"

He hadn't heard the name in years but the woman murdered far below his beat as a young cop surfaced in his mind. She'd been one of those nameless faces bent over needlework in her flat trying to scrounge money together to feed her child in an endless cycle for years. Abandoned by her man when the child was just an infant left her no choice. Sew lace handkerchiefs for rich ladies on Fifth Avenue or let her baby starve to death in a filthy, small tenement building. Pearl's death was as bloody and violent as the murders Dean investigated ten years later there in London. She'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and so had Dean, because he'd been down in her neighborhood visiting one of his boyfriends. He'd discovered her body in the alley.

"Is it true what the Times wrote about a police officer taking in the little girl until her relatives could come and collect her?" Castiel asked in a tone suggesting he already knew the truth but he wanted Dean to know that he understood it.

"The Times never printed my name," challenged Dean.

"Perhaps not but your police chief described it to me when I was looking to hire an American detective. He spoke of your selfless act as if it was a feather in the cap of the department but of course I knew you hadn't done it for glory. That little girl lived in your flat with you and your brother for a month before her cousins arrived from Iowa. I suppose she must be thriving in all that open prairie air now, hm?"

Having the deed pointed out made Dean shift uncomfortably. His eyes dropped to their hands entwined on his thigh. "They were gonna put the kid in an orphan asylum. I couldn't let that happen. Sammy and I became coppers for some excitement, that's true, but I think I have an unnatural taste for exacting justice where there is none." He fell quiet for a moment, a parade of memories running through his thoughts without stopping on anything specific. "She was a sweet little girl. I don't know anything about kids but she was out of diapers and she could feed herself, so I thought it'd be easy. Nightmares started on the first night. I realized she only slept through if she was with me, so we camped out in the same bed every night 'til her cousins came."

"And that's how I knew you were the best detective to find the Whitechapel killer," said Castiel, his voice almost reverent.

The air in that bedchamber pressed in on Dean with that kind of praise. He rubbed the back of his neck and avoided eye contact for quite a while until nervous laughter sputtered from his lips. "Well, would you look at that? We're just a couple of saps pretending to be tough and indestructible. You take in poor folks in Whitechapel and I take in orphans in Five Points. What a ridiculous pair we are."

"I wouldn't call us ridiculous." Lowering again, Castiel kissed his palm and then the soft, tender spot of his inner wrist. "I'd say we're the best hope these people have of finding peace. Your brother's the same, if he was here."

"He's unwell," Dean said quietly.

Castiel nodded. "I suspected."

The Earl of Rothes in his dark, luxurious morning robe, rose from his chair and make his way across the room. Following suit, Dean stood too, watching him pull on a velvet rope hanging next to the fireplace crackling away with low heat. The rope matched ones in every room and summoned servants like magic. Dean wondered at what he was up to but the man he remembered as Castiel's valet, Gadreel, appeared in the bedchamber doorway before he could ask. He remembered Gadreel after a brief encounter when he left the mansion in the middle of the night having kissed Castiel in the basement kitchen. The oddity of his name stuck in Dean's mind, as did his immense height much like his brother.

"M'lord," the valet said.

"Detective Winchester requires a new shirt and coat. His job is rather hazardous to his attire, I'm afraid." Castiel's eyes slid to Dean for a moment. "Order him a new set of clothes, something readymade. He must return to his job quite soon. You know where to go, yes?"

"I do, m'lord. Shall I run the bath?" replied Gadreel.

"Yes, I should think so."

"Very good, m'lord." Bowing slightly, Gadreel disappeared again.

Alone once more, Dean eyed Castiel with a sheepish grin and shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. "You don't have to do all that."

Castiel approached him, wearing a subtle smile, and rubbed his arms. "I do. You're barely standing you're so exhausted. I want you to enjoy the modern convenience of a hot bath from the spout right into the tub. And when you're washed clean of this poor woman's blood, you'll have a new suit of clothes waiting here so you can go and shake the rafters of every Catholic church in this city." As he spoke, Castiel peeled off Dean's coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and tugged his tie free from his neck, all doing so as if enjoying it.

It seemed Dean moved upon instinct without logic guiding his actions. He was indeed exhausted and not thinking clearly as he drifted forward, a hand skimming up Castiel's jaw, and kissing him hungrily. A flush of memory awoke Dean's body--apparently a separate entity from his mind--and he thought of being pressed against the tree while Castiel sent him into dizzying, distracting pleasure.

Naked hands touched naked muscles as Castiel caressed him from stomach to chest within his open shirt. The sensation of warm skin on warm skin acted as a catalyst to deepen their kiss into a wide, starving embrace. One of Dean's hands lowered to the knot securing Castiel's robe and he gave it a few tugs to free the garment. Two sides of deep blue fabric fell open and the only thing preserving Castiel's modesty was Dean braced up against him. Only Dean had an unobstructed view of a surprisingly strong body of olive skin and the athleticism of a horseman, a hunter, and even a touch of manual labor.

Castiel seemed distracted and needy as he broke their kiss, pulling back like it caused him pain to do so. "Dean," he whispered. "Dean, we cannot do this now."

"Why?" Dean whispered back.

"You're far too exhausted and heartsick by the things you witnessed last night to make a choice like this with a clear mind, for one thing," he replied, though their mouths still met and parted again and again like a magnetic force. "And the most unfortunate development, love, is my wife just down the hall readying for the day in her rooms. I care nothing for her knowing about us but I refuse to put you in a position of enduring her cruelty. She can be the cruelest woman, you know. It's her nature, as is her family."

More kisses. Dean hoped to sway him by dancing fingertips inside his robe along his hipbones, teasing of more intimate touches he could offer. "I don't care a heap of horseshit about your wife," he nearly growled.

Sighing through a shudder, a rather important part of Castiel pulsed near Dean's hand, trying to come to life even if he fought it. "We ought to be able to attend to each other properly without fear of being discovered."

"Name the time."

"I...."

Dean mouthed at Castiel's neck, tasting the faint remnants of soap combined with his natural earthy skin.

"Tonight," stammered Castiel. "Yes, tonight. Come to me after ten using the servant's entrance. I shall be here alone. Meg has a meeting with her society and those gatherings go on until dawn. We shall be safe." He touched Dean's face, guiding him to share close gazes and slower, sweeter kisses. "The investigation needs you by day. I need you by night."

Whenever anything encroached too much on his heart, Dean closed his emotions and relied on charm. Castiel made him feel too much standing there with hardly a full set of clothes between them and soft eyes with soft kisses.

Winking, Dean teased, "Wanna come watch me take this modern bath, m'lord?"


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being too long, so I'm dividing it into two chapters. The next one, which I'll post in a few days, will pick up exactly where both Dean and Sam left their scenes.

He needed to acquire another notebook soon but Sam didn't see a stationer in the village that evening. Smaller letters flowed from his pen as he recorded the interview with yet another dead end priest. That was the way of investigation, he reminded himself. Dozens of bad leads needed following before they discovered the final puzzle piece, yet that case came with it the pressure of time. Every bad lead left the door open for another girl to be slaughtered.

_Father Matthew O'Brian. St. Mary's, Tottenham. - Priest indicated no knowledge of the murders beyond newspaper reports, which are often factually ambiguous. Does not match Mrs. Harvelle's physical description of the suspect. No signs of ritual symbols present in the sanctuary or O'Brian's office. No redheaded nun._

A bold line underscored the entry in Sam's notebook. Five similar entries filled two pages before that one, all with the same frustrating result: no priest resembling their primary suspect.

Sam sighed, leaning back in his chair and stretched his legs beneath the desk. Metal bumping metal attracted his attention, making him look over his shoulder at the angelic beauty sitting cross-legged on the bed. The softness of her white nightgown contrasted the cold, heavy revolver being skillfully disassembled in her hands. Loose blonde curls spiraled down around her face, her shoulders, and low along her back. She examined each component of Sam's gun through eyes narrowed in quite serious concentration. Once she was satisfied that everything was in order, she replaced the bullets and slammed the chamber home.

"How do you know so much about guns?" Sam asked.

A secretive little smile appeared through her hair. "A lady living on her own who cannot defend herself isn't doing herself any favors, is she?"

"Good point." Sam smiled broadly. He couldn't help it. She was amazing.

Jessie unfolded herself from the bed as she slid the revolver home again in his worn leather holster. She hung it over the back of an unoccupied chair along with his coat, brushed and ready for the morning.

"Jess, you don't have to do that," he said apologetically.

"You really ought to come to bed." A soft voice fluttered near his hair and Jessie bent, standing just over his shoulder where he sat at the desk, and kissed his temple. "We've seen six priests in one day. It's quite a lot, you know, and in your condition too." Knowing fingers gently combed shaggy brown hair back from his face and she kissed his head again.

"It wouldn't be right for me to go to bed with you yet, darlin'," replied Sam, taking her hand and pressing his lips to her soft knuckles.

Jessie laughed. "You'd rather try to fold yourself up on that little chaise lounge over there than lie in bed beside a widow to whom you're not married. What a stubborn creature you are." Still laughing, though without malice, she wrapped herself around his shoulders from behind and let her loose blonde hair fall over his notebook. "You forget we've been posing as a married couple all day. How many of those priests tried to entice us into their parishes, hm? We look married to this village. There's no harm in sharing a bed, unless you're afraid I'll seduce you in the night."

Her teasing brought out Sam's laughter, though it sounded quieter and somewhat strained. They had indeed rented a room over a village tavern under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Cash, allowing them to stay together while they investigated Catholic churches in the villages around London.

"Oh," she cooed, growing concerned, "you're still in pain."

Saying nothing, Sam leaned over and nuzzled her narrow body just below the swell of her breasts. His arm looped around her waist, holding her warmth close as he closed his eyes and allowed her to know that yes, he was in pain. They stood quietly for a time. Jessie, in her white nightgown and cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, cradled his head to her body and softly combed her fingers through his hair.

"You're doing noble work. When the hangman makes quick work of the fiend, your worries will ease and so will these terrible sick headaches."

"I hope so," replied Sam into the cotton of her nightgown. He knew deep down that he would never be free of his second sight or its side affects but he hadn't yet figured out how to explain it to her.

Jessie nudged him carefully, guiding him to his feet and, he inevitably knew, guided him to go to bed with her. It didn't mean anything irreversible would happen, of course, but lying beside her throughout the night would be an intense temptation. He couldn't let temptation get the better of him no matter how lithe and soft her body was or how he simply knew they'd fit together as if one had been created for the other. It wasn't a good idea to put her in a position that would only hurt her in the end while their futures were so uncertain. But she was so enticing, smelling so delicious like lilacs on her skin and in the lively curls of her blonde hair. Maybe a little kiss here and there wouldn't get them into too much trouble, he reasoned.

A lightning bug pulled Sam's eye to the darkened window and interrupted his thoughts. He looked, realizing in the next second that lightning bugs wouldn't appear at the end of September, nor would they fly at the level of their third story rented room. Squinting and intensely curious--perhaps even vigilant--Sam leaned toward the window without letting go of Jessie's hand.

"What is it?" asked Jessie, leaning too.

More glowing dots appeared as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. They flickered and cast a golden haze on ... what ... oh, it was a dirt road illuminated by people carrying torches out of the village. He followed the flames licking the black night as they ascended a hill, it seemed, and the shimmer of silk here and there suggested it was women on a nocturnal expedition. It unsettled him. Sometime wasn't right about women leaving the safety of the village by torchlight when most people were tucking themselves into bed.

Without warning, Jessie shouldered past Sam and all but pressed her face to the window glass. "Oh no, what are they doing here?" she whispered as she shook her head in apparent disbelief.

"Who? You know what's going on?" pressed Sam, joining her side.

"Well, I'm not acquainted personally," she replied, "but there have been rumors in London for decades."

"About what?"

"It's been said some of the noblewomen lead a secret society made up of lower women who do their bidding to gain favor. I've never seen evidence of it but people do talk. Evidently some of the noblewomen even take amours among the lower women who serve them."

Nothing good ever came from secret societies. He knew that long before he ever set foot on English shores. A society was secret by virtue of doing illegal or immoral things in the name of greed or other selfish desires. Lightning jumped from cloud to cloud in the distance toward London, followed in a few seconds by the low warning of thunder. No, he didn't trust that gathering ascending the hill at all and, given the trail he and Jessie followed for the investigation, he couldn't let it go unchecked either.

"Stay here." Sam delivered the order in a bit of a growl as he turned from the window and grabbed his gun holster and his coat.

Jessie spun, protests flaring in her eyes. "Wait, where are you going?"

"We're looking for a killer who slaughters for ritual, aren't we? These women aren't just bored housewives. They're up to something that looks like a ritual to me from here. You're going to stay here where it's safe and I'm going to spy."

That said, Sam began to leave.

"Wait!" Jessie shouted angrily after him. "Sam! Sam!"

*****

A wry little smile greeted Dean from the man lounging against enormous fluffy pillows in an equally enormous bed. Soaked remained an inadequate word to describe him after getting caught in London's storm without an umbrella. He glanced down at his rumpled, dripping suit and patted his coat under self-conscious hands. That rug looked awfully expensive. He'd rushed into the unlocked backdoor of the Portland stone mansion just after ten that night like Castiel wanted but didn't stop long enough to wring himself out. Eagerness got the better of him, a fact he sorely regretted in that soggy moment.

"It's ... uh ... it's storming out there," Dean said sheepishly.

"I should hope so," replied Castiel with a slight grin, "otherwise one might think the great American detective has been investigating the Thames all day."

Laughter shook tension out of Dean's shoulders and he moved further into the room in search of a spot to hang his wet coat where it would cause the least damage. He peeled it off his shoulders, feeling Castiel's eyes on him. There was some of that tension again. They both knew why he was there but neither of them acknowledged it. He wasn't used to feeling awkward around any man, he thought as he peeled off his waistcoat, but it occurred to him that it meant one very clear thing. The pull to Castiel, the attraction, the need, wasn't just physical. It was somewhere else, somewhere deeper that he hadn't yet found inside of himself. Unexplored territory within frightened him but he wanted to jump into it and grab it with both hands at the same time. Self-awareness was uncharted territory too, which left him feeling a bit exposed like a raw nerve that threatened to send searing pain rippling through him if handled badly.

"You'll not come to my bed in wet clothes," said Castiel casually.

"Oh, well, you got a shirt I can use then?"

"No, sir."

Dean shot him a look.

A bit of restrained laughter tried to bubble in Castiel's aristocratic throat. "You're larger than I. My clothes will hardly withstand your ... many strong attributes." Lines deepened, suggesting an amused smile that didn't quite appear. He leaned on his side, elbow folded and head planted on his hand. "Do come to bed, detective. We'll have a nightcap."

The challenge in Castiel's voice instantly righted Dean's sense of awkwardness. An internal shift, something clicking into place, brought him back to himself in a way and reminded him of the ease with which other men and women had been conquered. Stripped away of his title, mansion, and fine clothes, Castiel was indeed but a flesh and blood man like any other. The corner of Dean's mouth turned up, in his element now, as he made a little show of undressing. First he stretched his arms high over his head, arched his back, and groaned out a luxurious sound as the bones making up his spine popped and realigned. Then he set about to the business of peeling off his braces and unbuttoned his soaked shirt. Though he carried on as if Castiel wasn't there, he felt the Earl's eyes openly tracing the hard lines of his body. He had the nobleman in the palm of his hand, he decided with a little smile. It would be easy to take him.

When the last garment--cotton drawers--pooled on the floor around his ankles, he stepped away from the discarded suit with the agility of an athlete. He faced Castiel but didn't meet his eyes, instead behaving as if he had all the time and interest in the world to look at the opulent bedchamber while giving his new lover a broad view of his nakedness. A little smile threatened to quicken his mouth when he heard the faintest hint of staggered breath coming from the bed's occupant. He had the upper hand, a position he was accustomed to enjoying with lovers no matter their sex.

Castiel leaned up and caught Dean's eye as he took a green liquor bottle and an elegant glass from his bedside table. An equally elegant hipbone appeared from beneath the feather down quilt, attached to a strong, toned leg within, Dean imagined. So he was utterly without apparel there in bed as well. The quickening from Dean's threatened smile pulsed down his body, then threatening to awaken another part of him with the thought of all the possibilities.

He needed nearness suddenly. A few strides brought him to Castiel's bed and he lifted the quilt to slide underneath it. The glimpse of flesh and muscle secreted away in there told Dean he'd imagined Castiel's body the right way. And the sudden intimacy struck him as he leaned on enormous pillows, lounging side by side in bed like an actual established couple. It made him nervous. The audacity of behaving like a normal couple felt so wrong and made him want to get the proceedings underway before that uncomfortable calm and belonging made him want wrong things too much. Men like him with his peculiar inclinations were broken inside and he knew it--society told him so every chance he got--so he leaped into lovemaking right away rather than let himself become at ease with his co-conspirators. Yet, as he watched Castiel open the green bottle, he thought the great man seemed perfectly content with his peculiar inclinations.

"You do this often?" Dean asked, hoping he sounded more conversational than accusatory.

Blue eyes shot up at his face. "What do you mean?"

"Well," he replied as he shifted, "I mean, you're so comfortable with another man in your bed. How'd you ever end up married?"

An amused chuckle rolled low in Castiel's chest. He put down the bottle and offered Dean his full attention. "My marriage isn't a passionate one. You're clever enough to have seen that by now, Dean. I told you last night how cruel my wife can be, which is a quality inherent to ... to her kind." It looked to Dean like he swallowed the way a man did when he encountered rotted food. "I know of her lovers, numerous in both men and women, and she knows about mine, which are not so numerous in either event." He attempted another wry smile.

"Men and women?"

Castiel nodded. "One might say I find the soul far more attractive than the body."

It was ridiculous to think Dean was the only one enjoying the Earl of Rothes' favor, yet a searing bolt of jealousy stabbed at his chest. He was a hypocrite, really. He could stand another man in his bed because at least he could compete and even the playing field. A woman, though? He couldn't compete with that. All he could do was hope there wasn't a woman enjoying his affections at present. "Too bad we can't see souls for what they are. It'd save heartache in the long run if one could see the inside qualities before they fell in love," observed Dean somewhat wistfully.

"Indeed," Castiel agreed quietly. "And have you loved, Dean?"

"Once, yeah. She was ... she was colored. We couldn't have a life together, obviously. If people hate anything more than a couple of sodomites, it's those who love between the races. At least men like us can keep our inclinations in the privacy of a bedchamber but mixing of the races has to be out in the open and nobody tolerates that."

Calm but sympathetic eyes studied him as Castiel nodded, perhaps understanding it deeper than anyone. "What became of your great love?"

"We were found out," replied Dean, hoping to detach himself from the memory enough to speak of it like an officer of the law recounting an old case. "This was back in Kansas, you know. I was fairly young and stupid. She had beautiful curly black hair and that was all I ever saw of her race. No one else was blind to it though. So when we were found out, I narrowly got her out of town with her father before the mob got her. Last I heard, they were working on a farm over in Missouri where the German families had always supported Lincoln in the war and weren't so prone to violence against the blacks." He cringed inwardly at lumping her in that separate category.

"Then you saw her soul," Castiel observed, pleased.

"Did I?"

"Yes, if you never saw her race, then you saw the beauty and value is her soul. So you see, you do have that power after all."

"Maybe," he replied with a sigh. Silently, he closed the door on that memory.

"And you never loved again?" asked Castiel.

"Nope." The syllable came out resolutely.

The corners of Castiel's mouth turned down slightly and Dean wondered if he'd imagined the disappointment in his expression. "That's a shame."

"Nah, I think it's pretty practical. "Being in love is like the summer sun, I think. It feels good at first, being outside and working hard with the sun on your back, but eventually the sun will turn on you. It'll burn you. The longer you stay, the deeper the burn. You'll be in pain for so long after you escape the sun because the burn seeps into your skin and you won't forget it. Every time you look to the sun after that, you'll only remember those awful blisters and dead skin instead of the pleasure that brought you to it. Better to admire the summer sun from a distance before it gets too deep."

A slow smile came over Castiel's lips but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He seemed to have a new understanding of Dean's character, yet he seemed slightly let down by his resistance to being in love.

"What?" Dean asked with an incredulous smile.

"You're a poet beneath your brute force, Dean Winchester."

"Oh, come on," he laughed, feeling pressure on his chest. Being reminded of the one woman he ever loved while in bed with a man who confused his senses wasn't the direction Dean wanted to take their night together. He grabbed the bottle for a distraction. "Woah. You're an absinthe man, huh?"

The unreadable smile intrigued Dean as Castiel took the bottle back. "In a manner of speaking. Have you ever chased the dragon?"

"No, can't say as I have."

Silently, Castiel set about to his work as Dean observed in great interest. A second elegant glass appeared between them, along with a pair of spoons, a small brown bottle, and a white porcelain sugarbowl painted in blossoming red flowers. Dean had a vague idea of what was happening but he'd never seen it done before, nor had he tried it.

The Earl handed him a glass and a spoon, which Dean held somewhat dumbly and he resisted asking obvious questions. He poured the smooth green liquid into each glass, leaving them about three-quarters full. Dean began to have a sip but Castiel's hand reached out and snatched him. With a knowing smile, Castiel guided Dean's hands to balance the spoon over the rim of the glass. He plucked a sugarcube from the fancy porcelain bowl, which he then deposited on Dean's spoon as well as his own. The little brown bottle with a rather inconspicuous label came next as he unscrewed the lid and revealed a long glass dropper. Then Dean understood. It was laudanum. Before Dean could inquire, Castiel lowered the delicate glass tip of the dropper over each sugarcube, giving each three drops of the notorious dark amber liquid.

Upon closing the laudanum bottle again, he set it aside on the bedside table behind him and glanced into Dean's eyes to make sure, Dean presumed, he paid close attention. The laudanum bled into the sugar cube and seeped between granules, soon turning the white sugar into a slowly melted bit of pale golden. Castiel waited, it seemed, until the precise moment and flipped the spoon into his glass of potent green spirits. It looked like Dean was supposed to drop his sugar too, so he mimicked his new lover, both stirring the concoction.

"Sugar cuts the bitter taste of both the absinthe and laudanum," explained Castiel in a casual tone as if he'd done it hundreds of times already. He lifted his glass by the thin stem. "To us. May we bring each other contentment and unfettered companionship so long as the fates allow."

Dean inclined his head and briefly raised his glass in acknowledgement. "To us."

The pair of them tipped back their glasses simultaneously, exposing long throats dotted with day-old stubble. It slid down his throat just as biting and harsh as he'd imagined. Immediately following the bitter taste came the sweetness of the sugar cube fighting for supremacy but ultimately losing in the end. He recoiled and scowled down at his empty glass, nearly muttering his disgust until the first inklings of warmth took root in his belly. It seeped through his limbs just the way the laudanum seeped through the minescule pores of the sugar and ultimately overtook the sturdy cube structure. Involuntary relaxation weighed down his body as his insides warmed like he'd swallowed a hot bath. The concoction fused to his being and became one with him almost before he had the time to clumsily put his glass on the table on his side of the bed.

Stillness beside him stirred his curiosity. He managed to lift his eyes to the man lounging on the next pillow, whose peacefully glazed blue eyes matched the contented smile curving his plump mouth. Dean smiled too. The enticing drink made him quite aware of Castiel's physical attributes and deepened the warmth along with a pleasant tingling over his skin. Indeed, it was like sinking into a blissful, steaming bath. He sank deeper into his pillows without apology.

"You surprise me, m'lord," he commented in an amused tone, more so when he realized his words came out slurred after only one drink.

Castiel's mouth twitched and he blinked languidly, still staring ahead. "It's the only thing that dulls my senses long enough to forget the circumstances of my existence." It was a candid admission, perhaps made with the aid of the absinthe and laudanum concoction.

"Are you very unhappy?" Dean asked. His body drifted without moving at all and he reached over his head to hold onto the bed's headboard.

He shook his head and even that motion seemed slow, like observing something underwater. "I'm not one to veer between emotions as ... as others are inclined to do by natural instinct. Frustration is my general state of being, you could say. Very little about my life is my own choice. I follow orders. Everything from my marriage to who I invite for holiday parties and receptions, which I find tedious and a waste of resources anyway." He sighed heavily, again probably with the aid of his drink. Dean hadn't yet seen him so open. "My only escape from my frustrations is to chase the dragon."

"I'll send you a case of good Kentucky bourbon," Dean offered absently.

"Doesn't do a thing for me," he replied.

"No?"

"Not bourbon, not brandy, not whiskey, not beer, not wine--nothing. I'd have to consume a gallon of each to feel even a fraction of the peace I feel now." Rolling his head to the side, Castiel peered into Dean's eyes and the bright blue turned a bit watery and affectionate. They studied each other in comfortable silence for a time. Finally Castiel spoke again. "Having you here at my side tonight relieves my frustrations all the more."

"Well," answered Dean with a hint of salaciousness in his voice as he rolled over and tasted absinthe on Castiel's lips, "let's see if we can't relieve all of your frustrations together then." Lowering to Castiel's smiling lips again, he kissed him ardently as a free hand slid teasingly down his chest, his abdomen, and encountered the velvety tip of arousal hidden under the blankets. "Eager, are we?"

*****

Crawling past the treeline on his belly, uphill mind you, seemed like the best way to approach the torchlight gathering when Sam began but he hadn't counted on the boggy ground. Rain pelted his face, matted his hair in clumps, and all but ruined his suit with mud. Thunder rolled high overhead, which he counted as a blessing in disguise, because it covered his approach. Sam got within range of the gathering, hidden behind a pointed standing rock, and caught snatches of their individual conversations.

Still, erring on the side of caution, Sam withdrew his revolver from the holster worn on his hip. Some Englishmen in passing had taken him many times for "an American gunslinger" for that choice alone instead of concealing his revolver in a holster hidden within his coats.

Sam surveyed the hillside. A campfire bordering on the size of a bonfire served as the focal point for the women--roughly two dozen, he estimated--while some of them kept a few torches lit. It was rather dark outside on London's metropolis, making torches necessary in spite of the crackling fire on the ground. It had been going for a while since the rain didn't extinguish the flames. Some women carried umbrellas but most seemed oblivious, or perhaps even welcoming, of the storm. Though the lightning hadn't abated, thunder and rain tapered into a calmer lull, making some pale faces turn skyward as if they thought the weather cooperated with their clandestine purposes.

A solitary figure shouldered her way through the crowd, followed closely by a torchbearer. She took her position on the opposite side of the ground fire, facing the gathering like she intended to place herself above the rest of them. She surveyed the scene too with the same cool mask on her features that Sam wore hidden there behind the standing rock. Studying her made Sam realize every woman present wore varying styles of black satin, velvet, and silk. There wasn't a drop of color in sight, which made them blend in with the night.

"... almost reached the fruition of ..."

Tilting as forward as he dared, Sam squinted through the drizzle and strained his hearing to catch what she said.

"... plans moving forward ... I'm pleased with your selections ... honored by Rowena ..."

The snatches of her address grew in intensity as she began strolling back and forth, quite at ease in a leadership position. A black feathered hat tied with a black satin ribbon obstructed Sam's limited view of her features in the dark but he saw the whites of her eyes along with gleaming white teeth. She was quite wealthy. Aristocratic, he guessed.

"... require more souls ..."

That stopped Sam short of even breathing. What was she saying? What ladies society spoke of souls like a commodity? Unconsciously, his palm tightened around his revolver's carved walnut inlaid handle as his unease deepened. The silent figure illuminating the leader with a torch moved every now and then as her speech carried to the gathering, who watched with rapt attention. His mind raced to piece together the clues. Rowena had been mentioned. She was a person of interest connected to the priest Dean suspected to be Leather Apron, a fact that prickled Sam's skin until gooseflesh rose. Following the trail to Tottenham had been right after all if those women were linked with the suspect. A rush of strength flooded his body, making him want to beat down every church door in the village until he found the killer posing as a priest but he knew he couldn't move in the night without giving his target the advantage. He scoured his hunting grounds at night and those women, evidently aiding his efforts, clearly operated by night as well. Better to advance on them with Dean by daylight no matter how his gun itched to make quick work of it.

The aristocratic woman turned as she spoke, facing Sam's direction again. She seemed to be delivering instructions to the gathering, which, upon closer inspection, appeared to be made up of the lower women Jessie described back in their rented room. Jessie. He needed to get her armed and safe as soon as possible if the killer was indeed in the Tottenham area. For all Sam knew, Leather Apron wasn't there at all but down in London hunting Whitechapel girls at that very moment.

Her arm extended as if welcoming another speaker. It was that moment when Sam noticed rich gold embroidery along the bodice of her black gown. Birds of some kind. He squinted. Ravens. Why did that seem familiar? Come to think of it, each woman present had some sort of raven on her person whether embroidered on her attire or represented in her jewelry.

Another woman appeared, derailing Sam's fevered, rushed thoughts, and her perfect posture suggested wealth as well. She seemed tall and the dancing shadows of flames only seemed to elongate her figure to an imposing height. It appeared that she knew what her posture did to all eyes on her and she carried herself like a queen, hands clasped elegantly before her tapered waist. A bright glint of red snatched Sam's attention to her flaming hair coiffed beautifully beneath a small black veiled hat. There he recognized her.

"Abaddon," he spat under his breath.

He knew her from Dean's description of the unusually high class brothel in Whitechapel, where he too had seen her from a distance. They'd observed Lady Margaret and Lady Ruby leaving the brothel that day. Remembering it made Sam have a more detailed look at the other two women standing back enough to allow Abaddon to address the gathering in her disturbingly smooth voice. Sure enough, he realized the one with gold ravens embroidered on her bodice resembled Lady Margaret and the one dutifully holding a torch possessed the quiet submissiveness of Lady Ruby. He cursed under his breath, considering the implications of the Countess of Rothes in league with Leather Apron. Dean wasn't going to like that development.

Just as Sam began collecting himself in the mud to leave, Abaddon's hands spread. Her palms lifted skyward as if conducting a ritual. Her devotees lifted their torches and spread their hands in tribute. Abaddon spoke what Sam recognized as Latin in a powerful voice, looking as if she called down the gods from their thrones in the sky. Well-timed winds tore at her clothes and gave a bit of theater as if she conjured it on her own free will. The back of his neck prickled. He couldn't look away, whether by fascination or fear, but he had the presence of mind to copy down her words in a damp notebook from his pocket.

When he looked up again, a truly terrifying sight greeted him, nearly stopping his heart where it stood in his chest. Abaddon, Lady Margaret, and Lady Ruby each spread their arms wide and blinked simultaneously. The whites of their eyes, formerly flickering bright by the light of the fire, disappeared entirely, consumed by blackness. A chill sent tremors through Sam's body. His swallowed but the sandpaper quality of his throat appeared suddenly, as did a hard fear that he was loathed to admit.

Sam scrambled down the hill on his hands and knees until he was sure they couldn't see him anymore, and then he broke into a run. Pounding his legs on the slippery cobblestones made him stumble more than once but he hardly stopped. Only falling flat on his face could have disrupted his retreat back to the rented room over the tavern. Just what the hell were those women? Perhaps he'd been mistaken and spooked himself like a fool. It simply wasn't possible for three women to abruptly change their eyes from varying shades of green and brown to black like oil. The image seared itself into his brain so profoundly that he knew he didn't hallucinate it. Black had indeed overtaken their natural eyes and bled into the innocent whites surrounding their irises. Yet it wasn't possible. How could such a thing possibly happen? What the hell was going on in England?

The sudden burst of people startled him as he flew into the tavern. He stopped just inside the door and hastily holstered his revolver before anyone questioned why he panted so hard with a weapon drawn. As he made his way to the bar, largely unnoticed, an image struck him hard in the brain. Jessie wore a signet ring when they first met along with other gold jewelry, harsh against her mourning black, and those bits of jewelry often featured ravens.

Uneasy and, if he was honest, more than a little frightened, Sam downed a whiskey double and then another. Everything spiraled rather too fast for him to make sense of it. His chest scarcely expanded with his breathing, an all too awareness reaching him that he needed to calm down before he encountered the lady installed upstairs. With his hands braced wide apart on the bar, he forced air into his body and he ran through the reasons why Jessie might have been associated with women like those gathered on the hill. Mud crumbled from his trouser leg on the floor as he thought about it and he combed back the length of his wet hair with trembling fingers. The evidence wasn't in her favor. She knew who they were but passed off her knowledge as rumors. She'd lied.

"She hasn't been wearing the raven ring for a while though," Sam argued with himself, muttering into his glass. At least there was that nugget of hope.

A man eyed him in passing, probably wondering why Sam talked to himself.

There was one way to get to the truth though. It occurred to him when his eyes lowered to avoid unwelcome attention. He looked upon his hands, large and strong, somewhat gnarled with the story of his early life on a Kansas farm. His hands knew truth in everything he touched. That truth frequently punctured his brain like an iron poker left on the fire.

Upstairs, Sam found Jessie pacing their rented room in her nightgown and bare feet. She'd been hugging her heavy cashmere shawl tightly around her shoulders until Sam came into the room, and then she let go. His resolve stumbled upon seeing her there with such anxiety in her eyes.

"You're filthy! What have you been doing?" Without a second thought, Jessie flung the shawl from her shoulders and wrapped it around him. "Are you hurt? You're soaked to the bone. Wait, come here and get out of these wet clothes before you catch your death." She padded across the room and took an iron poker to the fireplace, stoking the flaming logs into renewed life. "What happened out there?"

Although Jessie fluttered about in a heightened state of tension peppering Sam with questions, he retreated inside of himself to collect his thoughts. One course of action seemed best. He leaned on the bedpost and folded his arms over his chest, ignoring the cold and wet dripping on his shoulders from his hair. It was true. He probably would end up sick but it was nothing compared to the manner in which he would soon suffer on his quest to reach the truth.

"Sam?"

He sighed, resigned to his task. "Darlin', I have a few rather important questions and I'm gonna give you one chance to tell me the truth. You need to be aware that I shall know if you lie soon enough. Whatever exists between us will be severed permanently."

Jessie stilled and her features hardened the way she used to look at him when they first encountered each other.

"How did you come to know Abaddon and the Countess of Rothes?" Pausing, Sam let his eyes bore into her face. He let the question sink in, let her understand that he'd rooted out her secret, and let her think carefully about the consequences of dishonesty. "For that matter, what exactly did you do for them? And why are you not up on that hill now worshiping them like those other low born women, as you so aptly called them?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains strong sexual content. Top Cas, bottom Dean. Wing kink too.

"I cannot tell you," replied Jessie, drawing so far into herself that she turned her back and shrank her height.

Sam's jaw clenched as he stared at the back of her head. "Can't or won't?"

"Both," she whispered around a sob.

He didn't know what to make of the way she crumbled and refused to look him in the eye. If anything, he expected her natural grit to propel them into a knock down drag out fight. Tense and uncertain, Sam observed Jessie try with all her might to stop her tears as she drifted toward the window and grabbed onto the frame.

"You're afraid," he murmured. "Why?"

"I cannot tell you," repeated Jessie, "because you won't believe me."

Again, the lady surprised him. "Why are you afraid? Has someone threatened you?"

Jessie shook her head. "Not in so many words."

With a sigh, Sam pushed away from the bedpost he'd been leaning on and he approached from behind to let her feel his presence. "I must know what you've gotten yourself into, darlin'."

"No," she resisted.

"Jessie, don't make me root out the truth the hard way." Sam's hand twitched at his side, dreading the possibility that he'd have to use his second sight. "I don't wanna have to do that to you but I will if you keep resisting me because this is all connected to the killer. I know it. You need to tell me what you know, not thinking of what lies between us, but thinking of the women we're trying to save from bloody deaths. Set us aside if you must. I just need to know."

Body going still, Jessie's eyes focused on the nothingness before her in the middle distance as her mind worked through the problem. "How...." Her eyes pinched shut and she tried again. "How exactly do you root things out of people?"

"I touch them," he said, "or I touch objects."

She stepped closer. "And then?"

"And then I learn things. I extricate truth even when people try to bury it. It's not a choice for them or for me."

"Is it always the truth?"

Sam nodded.

A moment of hesitation gave Jessie pause and then she stepped forward, holding out her hands for him in a submissive offering that confused him until she spoke. "Then you'll know it's true if you touch me."

"Doesn't it frighten you?" Sam asked, making no move for her hands.

"Of course it does but I trust you more. When your pain comes afterward, I shall take care of you." Her eyes flickered off to the side. "If you still want me, that is."

It was a bad idea and he knew using his sight too often resulted in debilitating illness, yet she had a point. Whatever she had buried in her that needed confessing likely had the potential to make him doubt her. Offering herself to him without natural walls - letting him push into her brain - meant she had nothing to hide. Even if he chose to accept the offering and trust her without following through with the act, she might miss some detail he'd need later. If it was pertinent to the murderer ravaging Whitechapel, he needed every last detail.

Jessie was shivering. Whether from fear or cold, he didn't know, but it made him realize his hair still dripped in long streaks from the rain and his suit was splattered with mud. He swung away the shawl she'd tossed over his shoulders in her immediate concern when he'd burst into the room so full of angry questions and wrapped the warm wool around her body in that moment of clarity. The willingness he found in that astonishing woman to not only accept his strange gifts without hesitation but to allow him to test her truth made him soften toward her and desirous of looking after her. As she unconsciously burrowed lower into the shawl, numb in silence, he drew her into his embrace and pressed a kiss atop her curly blonde head.

"I'd like to try receiving a slow drip of information instead of a broken levee. Maybe it won't hurt so much afterward," he said in a gentle tone, leading her to the bed.

She nodded. "How do we do it?"

"Let's rest against the pillows here. Then you'll tell me everything you know. When I require confirmation or more detail, I'll take your hand."

"So it's a little bit at a time instead of all at once."

"Right."

Her eyes turned up to his, making her resemble a little girl quite afraid but strong enough to endure at the same time. "Promise you'll believe me, no matter what you hear tonight or any other night."

"I swear it," Sam replied.

They settled together in the rented bed over the bustling tavern - a bed that had earlier promised new physical intimacy but instead gave them intimacy of a different kind. Sam peeled away his rain-soaked, mud-splattered clothes down to his drawers, which were reasonably dry and put them on a more even playing field. Piling pillows behind them and they reclined comfortably shoulder to shoulder. Without asking, she seemed to understand the necessity for Sam to be in a safe place if they were going to touch each other's minds.

"Are you certain about this?" he asked one last time.

Jessie's face rolled toward his where they reclined against the headboard. "Can you really see into people? Can you really divine truth from an object or a hand?"

"Yes. Sometimes the future too."

"Then I'm certain," she said. "Tell me what to do, darling diviner."

Sam's mouth twitched in a faint smile. The new nickname warmed him from within, making him less uneasy with his abilities. She'd called them gifts. How odd. Nothing in Sam ever held such an optimistic view of what he could do with his brain.

"Start from the beginning and tell me what you know about the gathering I happened upon tonight."

Letting out a heavy, reluctant sigh seemed to both clear Jessie's mind and fortify her for the ordeal of letting someone else share her secrets. Sam wanted to reach over and hold her or take her hand but he knew it wasn't possible. The process had already begun. Passages opened in the deeper parts of his body, wherever the unseen ability took root, and reached out with hungry abandon for the energy she exuded. So he remained as still as death, waiting.

"The women you saw ... I was once one of them. I'm no longer part of what they're doing and you must be certain of that. Please, you must--"

"--I know."

"How?" She peered over at him.

Sam lifted a naked shoulder. "They were wearing black and each of them wore some version of a raven on their person. I noticed the same things about your appearance when I first came to the apothecary with my brother but I didn't know what it meant."

"I was in mourning."

"And now?"

Jessie's eyes tilted downward a fraction. "No longer."

"Go on," pressed Sam after a moment.

Gaze turned to the ceiling, she sounded calmer when she continued. "I was in mourning, as I said. My husband's death had been unexpected and I knew nothing about operating his apothecary but I had to learn. It was my only means of survival aside from remarrying, which wasn't a possibility in my mind or my heart. I refuse to marry for simple convenience. If I couldn't make it on my own merits, no man deserved me thereafter in my view of the world. It was a struggle learning everything my husband never taught me when he was alive. I hired a druggist to make sure people received the care they needed and didn't suffer from my inexperience. Then one day, a man came into the shop. He called himself Gadreel. He said he was valet to the Earl of Rothes, who had taken an interest in my crusade to hold onto my independence."

Sam didn't like where it was going but he kept quiet.

"The Earl makes a habit of investing his wealth in businesses owned by women and those in danger of sinking into poverty. I understand he secretly invests a lot in Whitechapel business too, like he can singlehandedly rescue all the poor and sick by himself," Jessie continued, oblivious to Sam's unease. "He invested in my apothecary. He saved my livelihood and asked nothing in return until I was told you and your brother needed safe housing. Even then, if I had refused, the Earl would have abided by my free will. I'm not afraid of him. The Earl of Rothes is a good man true to his word but he has his secrets. No, it's not him who I fear."

"Then who?" asked Sam.

"The Countess of Rothes." Even saying Lady Margaret's title made Jessie's arm stiffen where it rested against the solid bulk making up Sam's arm. True fear radiated from her soul. "I believe he would protect me if it became dangerous but he doesn't know everything. He couldn't possibly know." Her tone lowered as if speaking to herself.

A wicked flare of protective impulses shot through Sam's feet up into his body and stretched through the ends of his matted wet hair. "What's she done to you?"

"She's evil. She's the very heart of blackness. The daughter of lies and deception. Do you...." She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. "This is the part where I need you to believe me. Do you believe in demons, Sam?"

*****

Approaching the second hour with only a few minutes between here or there had Dean a jumbled raw mess of exhausted, hungry for more, and entirely impressed with the Earl of Rothes' stamina. Just when Dean thought he'd drift into deep sleep, his new lover invented a new position, lapped his tongue just there, or merely breathed on his skin and it began all over again. Nothing about it made him feel forced or cornered or even wrong for coupling with another man either. He reached out for Castiel as fiercely as Castiel reached out for him. If Dean ever came close to believing two people were split from one soul, it was that night in that man's enormous bed surrounded by unrestrained opulence.

"Cas...." he groaned, voice raw and broken, "I'm gonna ... I'm gonna...."

"Not yet," mumbled Castiel.

The vibration of his gravelly voice sent a tremor through Dean's cock and he laughed at the idea that he could actually stop himself from bursting down the man's throat. If the damned thing didn't drop off tomorrow from overuse tonight, it'd be a miracle. But good God, he couldn't even begin thinking of tomorrow and enduring a day without Castiel tangled up in the bed linens with him.

Dark hair shooting in every direction emerged from inside the sheet over Dean's abdomen. Kissing each muscle twitched under Castiel's kisses. Reaching down, Dean's fingers curled into all of that luxurious dark hair just as Castiel rose up over his body. Being underneath a man had his heart tripping over itself and his breath coming in constrained gasps. It wasn't his way. That night and in every other anonymous encounter, he'd maintained control, but lying beneath Castiel's dark, possessive gaze left him feeling inexperienced and vulnerable. Real men never allowed themselves to be exposed.

"Slow your thoughts, love," whispered Castiel, his breath warming Dean's earlobe. "I can hear you thinking too hard."

"I can do this for you," Dean offered.

Castiel laughed a low rumbling sound as he kissed the line of Dean's jaw toward his throat. "Don't you trust me?" he murmured. "I would never hurt your pride or anything else so beautiful in you."

A hot tingling sensation pooled low in Dean's gut. Perhaps it was the trust existing between them that he couldn't comprehend after such a short time let alone articulate. Perhaps it was the absinthe cocktail rolling through his body. Perhaps it was the wicked length of hard flesh lying on his belly that begged for attention. Whatever the cause, Dean acquiesced and let his elbows collapse. He pressed a hand over Castiel's chest as the aristocratic man loomed over him as if testing whether he was actually real. At any second, he expected Castiel to melt into the night and disappear altogether.

Thunder rolled in the distance. Soon rain pelted the windows in the grand bedchamber all over again as if their lovemaking conjured the storm. Distorted shadows reflected bands of dripping rain from the window glass on Castiel's body - athletic and hard as it was strong and tall. Intoxicated, Dean realized he wanted to be immersed in that being as Castiel, watching him in silence, pulled his legs around his waist.

"I scarcely remember who I was before this night." It sounded like the fulfillment of a prayer from Castiel's lips, as if he wanted to lose himself in something greater.

Castiel reached over Dean for the well-used pot on the nightstand containing lavender oil. A bit of a dandy thing to Dean but no less effective in all of their amorous activities. The Earl of Rothes coated his fingers in the sweet oil and, still watching Dean, reached beneath him and worked him open in a much gentler manner than Dean had done to him earlier in the night. Hunger to drive himself deep into that aristocratic body had made him clumsy and careless, yet Castiel seemed to relish in teasing him with feathery touches and probing fingertips locating the bit of flesh within Dean's body that made his muscles curl. His chest stretched and bowed up toward Castiel's chest, yet never found planes of hot skin to deepen his pleasure. Castiel hovered over him just out of reach and observed as Dean fell apart piece by piece into a writhing mass of moans and legs spreading wider with invitation. The Earl of Rothes knew exactly what he was doing.

And then a sudden void replaced those strong fingers. Only the ghost of pleasure kept Dean moving, twisting beneath Castiel in search of friction. A flood of delicious aching took root at the base of his cock and he realized he'd taken himself roughly in his own hand. Castiel shifted over him, briefly bending to lap at the slick head, which threatened to shoot Dean up to the ceiling. He groaned out a filthy oath. Drifting onward to a fourth climax in the night offered a vague promise of killing him in the process but he was fine with it. Release was all that mattered.

That face, that beautiful secretive face, rose over him again. Castiel hooked Dean's legs over his arms and put him in a wide-open position both free and pinned down all at once. All of their exploration and games for power left them barely satisfied, yet loose like overused rubber. A low, hungry sound rattled deep in Castiel's chest as the thickness of his cock slid into Dean inch by inch. Only clenched muscles twitching around his jaw suggested the immense pleasure radiating through his body and putting cracks in the mask of cool reserve. Dean tried bucking his hips just to see if he could shatter Castiel's control altogether but his legs hooked over his lover's arms gave him precious little wiggle room.

It seemed Castiel wasn't interested in gentle lovemaking as they had the first time so long ago. Once assured of Dean's ability to withstand his attentions, light slapping sounds between thrusts soon grew into an enormous headboard thumping the wall. He dove into Dean faster and faster and Dean allowed himself to be submissive, feverish with the new sense of pleasure.

Dean reached over his head and grabbed onto the headboard with one hand to anchor himself there. His hips swirled in wicked circles, making Castiel hit home at a slightly different angle each time. The aristocrat with perfect manners was losing control over him, openly biting his lips and encouraging Dean when his other hand snaked down his belly to grab his cock. So he liked watching. Dean's forearm burned as he worked himself into a frenzy with quick, rough strokes.

They could have gone on until dawn that way, Castiel pounding into him and watching Dean's rough hand stroke in an equal rhythm. Teetering on the edge of insanity or violent release reminded Dean of the way it felt to drink absinthe and laudanum. Ragged groans filling the room detached his thoughts as soon as they tried to materialize though and he gave up trying to preserve the moment. He gave himself over to it instead, letting out a series of debauched encouraging moans that hit tones he'd seen drive Castiel to the brink before.

His strength never faltered but his composure crumbled the harder he rode Dean toward his climax. Castiel's head lolled down but not before Dean witnessed the whites of his eyes in an expression of sinful pleasure. Lightning slashed the sky outside, creating cross-hatch patterns through the window on Castiel's naked shoulders and Dean's open thighs.

A glimmer of something caught Dean's attention in that moment. Though unwilling to derail the proceedings, he nevertheless squinted at the void over Castiel's shoulder blades where his head had just been a second before. His lover was enthralled by watching Dean stroke himself and never noticed the faint disturbance in the shadowy room. The glimmer grew. A flash of thin light traced an outline. Two long stretches of faint light emerged from the backs of Castiel's shoulders and even moved with his body's jerky thrusts as if attached to him. The moment was coming. Dean felt Castiel's body trembling inside of him and over him all around ... and so too did the faint glimmer tremble with him.

Wings. Wings as thin and ghostly as a dragonfly materialized from Castiel's shoulders, stronger and brighter in light the deeper he sank into physical bliss and lost control. Dean blinked, yet his own body screamed, well past the point of no return even if he knew he had to be hallucinating wings growing out of his lover. It was the absinthe. It had to be the laudanum in it making him see things ... seeing perfectly formed but barely visible black wings and blue, green, and purple iridescent light flashing over each feather. He was drunk. He was high.

Jesus Christ, he was inches from bursting into his hand.

"Oh, Dean...." Castiel began chanting it louder in ragged syllables. "Yes ... yes! Dean!"

The final thrusts hit Dean with such violence in the initial tremors of Castiel's release. His dark hair whipped high over his shoulders, exposing a long throat dotted by stubble and purple marks where Dean had been sucking and biting at his skin.

Yet as Castiel's face bloomed open in exquisite agony, his gaze settled on Dean's face - a gaze illuminated from within by bright blue light. That light seemed to swallow even his black pupils as he ground his hips into the fleshy shapes of Dean's bum, spilling everything he had like a man marking that which he held most dear. Ghostly luminous wings went stiff over his shoulders as if he felt his climax ripping through limbs Dean had hallucinated. Those eyes, though. He'd seen the same glow in the darkness downstairs in the cellar kitchen just a few nights before, but the light's power couldn't be denied there in bed.

Frightened, painfully aroused, curious, burning, and altogether alive, Dean felt better believing the absinthe cocktail made him see false things even if something in him knew he witnessed Castiel's inner truth. Just what that inner truth meant, he couldn't begin to fathom.

Sated but still eager, Castiel lowered to lap up the wet stiffness of Dean's cock. His body trembled and went into its own craving for release despite the questions populating his thoughts. Eager slurping surrounded his overwrought organ as Castiel swallowed him down more and more with each pass. The depravity in seeing an aristocrat's head expertly bobbing over Dean's pelvis, his thighs splayed without reservation, repopulated his mind with the kind of filth that put him back on track. Biting his lower lip kept him from shaking the rafters of that mansion in his verbose expressions of debauchery.

There. A hot coil snapped loose inside of Dean and white bursts of light sprang through his body. His head flung back into the feather pillows beneath him. Hanging onto every last second of a blinding climax made him risk choking Castiel as his fingers tangled in all that dark hair and his hips pumped rapid, hard thrusts up into that wet, full mouth.

In fact, he thought he might die. And he welcomed it.

Dean knew nothing else for quite some time. He awoke again to find the storm outside completely dissipated and a calm dark night embracing the new lovers. Still naked, the bed sheet twisted around his knees. He became aware of weight on his thigh. Castiel laid there awake and peaceful, his head pillowed on one of Dean's open thighs while he lazily caressed the other. He blinked and the light filtering through the window revealed nothing unusual beyond the beautiful crystal blue irises that had taken Dean by surprise weeks ago. Even the age lines around his eyes and creasing his brow had relaxed into contented thoughtfulness.

"Did I hurt you?" asked Dean, surprised by the rawness of his voice.

Castiel peered up at him, chin propped on his thigh. "Goodness, no. I've bruised your body all over, however." Even the Earl's voice sounded raw, scratchy, and shattered.

A drunken smile plumped Dean's face. "Eh, I'm good." He was better than good. He thought perhaps he came close to touching love again.

But hell no, he wasn't saying that out loud.

"Hey, Cas?"

"Hmm?"

Something shimmery flashed in his mind and then he remembered Castiel's transformation in the last fevered moments of their lovemaking. "Does absinthe make you see things that aren't there?" He took the coward's way around his question.

"Well," replied Castiel, "it has that effect on some but not me personally."

Dean said nothing. He reclined in his luxurious pillows, weighing the validity or imagination of what happened. If it had been real, which it wasn't, then it meant Castiel revealed a part of himself that couldn't possibly be human. The impossibility of that conclusion made Dean want to laugh. Perhaps instead, Castiel dabbled in dark arts or some other illusionary technique to make Dean respond in deeper awe of him. To what end? It made no sense. There was no need for magic tricks between them. And in truth, it seemed like Castiel had no idea what Dean saw. Games like that would frighten away any sane person.

So if he wasn't altogether human, then what was he? Dean did laugh at himself then, breaking the calm silence in the opulent room, and realized how ridiculous it was to entertain such an idea. By morning, everything would look different. He'd understand the peculiar way absinthe and laudanum made him see the world.

"Dean?"

"I'm just thinking of how many times we did it and how sore we're going to be tomorrow," he said with a laugh to cover the lie.

*****

Daylight brought a deceptive cheer to London after a night of violent storms. Sam hadn't slept yet and neither had Jessie, both having decided it best to come home and wait for Dean to turn up. They had expected him to be there when they arrived by gray dawn light but it appeared that he hadn't even slept in his bed yet either. Although Sam had a good idea of where he was, he had no desire to betray the secret relationship blooming between his brother and the Earl of Rothes. It was a dangerous proposition, he understood after his night with Jessie, but it was better to shield her as much as possible.

"Here, sweetheart. Drink this."

Sam blinked, revived from his thoughts. There Jessie bent before him and folded his hands around a hot cup of tea smelling of rich winter spices. She looked him over with silent questions in her softly colored eyes but only reserved speaking for mundane things. So she still feared that Sam hadn't believed her story.

"Jessie, I love you," he blurted.

She spun away from the fireplace with an iron poker in her hand, all but forgotten. "Pardon?"

"I love you," he repeated, testing the feel of it on his tongue. "If I didn't, do you think I would have come home with you after what you told me? I'm racking my brain trying to think of the best way to protect you." Rising from the sofa in the rented rooms shared with his brother, Sam swallowed some of her tea and put the cup on the mantle. "It must mean I love you. I'm sure of it. And if I ... if I have to stay in London to watch over you, I will. Demons don't scare me. Not with you to back me."

"Then you...."

"Of course I believe you. What could you possibly gain from lies like those?" Sam scoffed. "Demons in London must mean there are demons in every city. Lady Margaret, Lady Ruby, and Abaddon must only be the tip of the iceberg, so we've got to get my brother onboard with us. Just how we're going to convince the Earl of Rothes of what he married, I haven't the slightest idea."

"I know," Jessie whispered with a nod.

He paused in his strange mania and touched her cheek. "What is it?"

A deep breath strengthened her, it appeared. "I love you too, Sam."

Without hesitation, almost before Jessie got it out, Sam slipped his hands into her blonde curls and lowered his mouth to kiss her lips. She clutched the sleeves of his jacket. Somehow the knowledge settled between them in wordless clarity that they were stronger together than apart.

The door flung open, interrupting the sweetness of a lover's embrace, and Dean shuffled over the threshold. "Hey," he greeted in a glaring example of his American speech. "Oh, Mrs. Moore. Surprised to see you here. Thought you'd be down in the shop mixing potions for London's sick and disadvantaged." Something about his slow gait suggested stiffness in his joints as he peeled off his overcoat.

Sam faced his brother but held tight onto Jessie's hand. "What happened to you? Looks like you got beat up."

"Shut it," Dean retorted with a grin edging his faraway look.

"Oh, Christ." Sam rolled his eyes. "Really?"

Confused, Jessie's eyes darted between them. "What happened?"

"Nothing," both Winchester brothers said.

Still holding hands, Jessie and Sam stood by somewhat awkwardly while Dean drifted. He took off his jacket and wandered only in his waistcoat without a care for the lady in the room. Obviously he sensed the shift in their relationship and began behaving as if Jessie was family no matter how they sometimes spat at each other. Sam was the hinge holding their trio together, which put more weight on his shoulders, because he knew they didn't stand a chance against demons without each other. With the Earl added to the mix, it made them like four corners of an unshakable square. Take one away and everything collapses.

Dean plucked a case file from his stack on the desk between two windows and settled back into his routine. As he strolled closer to Sam and Jessie, he glanced up, took a double take, and squinted.

"Damn. You used it. You look like hell."

Eyes flickering to the floor, Sam nodded and jerked his head toward Jessie. "She knows everything about my sight."

Dean glanced at her with an arched brow. "You're not scared?"

"I'm frightened for his health," replied Jessie, covering their knotted fingers with her other hand. "There was a nosebleed afterward. I took care of it and his sick headache too."

"Well ... thanks." A shallow nod conveyed Dean's gratitude.

Jessie nodded back. "I love him, Detective Winchester. There's no sense in tiptoeing around it. So as far as I can surmise, you and I must find a way to appreciate each other more. We're only hurting him. You know as well as I do that his sight is only as sturdy as his health. Let's not weaken him further by continuing to dislike each other."

A second arched brow joined the first and Dean's eyes turned from her face to Sam. "She's got brains."

Sam grinned. "Yes, she does." Striving to make peace between them had a deeper purpose and Sam sensed it. She looked to him, encouraging him in her eyes. Sam cleared his throat. "There's something going on that you need to be aware of, Dean. We've got to talk."

"Sounds serious," he replied.

"It's about the murderer. We made discoveries last night that affect all of us," continued Jessie, sharing Sam's burden.

Sam nodded. "You better sit down."


	14. Chapter 14

"You realize this is insane, don't you?"

"I know."

Dean shook his head and tugged at his starched white collar. The pair of Winchester brothers hadn't slept at all, each for very different reasons, yet duty called. As they made their way to the new police station still under construction, Dean struggled to wrap his head around the story Jessie and Sam told him. There was no time for questions once officers pounded on the door to drag them out for yet another murder investigation.

Demons. Jessie had insisted there were demons in London wearing the skins of so many aristocratic ladies they'd already met because of the Earl of Rothes. And if there were demons - it still sounded preposterous even in his thoughts - then Castiel, the Earl, was surrounded by hellish creatures. Was he one of them? Images flashed through Dean's mind of the lean aristocratic body arching over him, the iridescence shining on the faintest glimmer of wings. Were they real? They certainly seemed real at the time but he'd been drinking absinthe laced with laudanum before they tangled in each other for hours and hours. Somehow Dean knew low in his gut that what he'd witnessed was real. The outline of stunning black wings, the bright white-blue light pouring from his eyes, and the unnatural strength were all incredibly real. Had he given himself over to hell-fire?

No. No, he didn't think Castiel was evil. Something about the whole thing didn't add up, yet he did believe the Countess of Rothes was the devil incarnate. He remembered seeing the picture of aristocratic grace retire to a private corner of the estate with her lady-in-waiting for depraved games that usually existed only in the darkest corners of perfect society minds. Something about Lady Margaret and Lady Ruby did strike Dean as not quite soulful in the way humans interacted with compassion toward one another.

"Are you listening?" Sam elbowed his arm.

"What? No. Sorry."

Sam sighed as they darted between carriages and crossed a busy cobblestone street. "Look, we've got a job to do. I know what Jessie told us was lunacy but for now we gotta compartmentalize everything. Right now we're headed to investigate a body found in the cellar of the new police building. We're special detectives hunting down the Whitechapel killer. That's it."

It took Dean a few seconds but he sucked in a deep breath and nodded. "You're right."

"I'm just telling you what you'd tell me."

A noncommittal sound rolled around Dean's throat. He changed the subject if Sam insisted on compartmentalizing their lives. If that was the case, he steered clear of thinking about the bond he shared with his brother too. "Don't you think it's more than strange for a dead body to turn up, quite literally, in the cellar of the new Scotland Yard building? How did that even happen? How did no one see a person getting murdered and hacked into pieces?" Dean barely noticed the woman slapping her hands over her child's ears and dragging him to the other side of the sidewalk. He grabbed the file folder from his brother and scanned through the scene description.

"Well, there haven't been any police here yet. Just carpenters and craftsmen as far as I know," Sam replied.

They strode up to the incomplete front facade of the building, each wearing freshly laundered suits provided by Jessie who said they'd be taken more seriously as detectives if they looked like they tried to fit in better with Londoners. Dean found it ridiculous that his attire mattered but he realized she had a point when the two officers guarding the door swept them inside without question upon Sam presenting their credentials.

The new Scotland Yard building appeared nearly finished on the interior and it was completely impressive in Dean's eyes. Clean and laid out with offices ready to be filled with English detectives and high-ranked officers, it certainly didn't resemble the dark, filthy places where they usually examined crime scenes. Dean tugged on his collar again, earning a warning glance from his brother as they were led deeper into the building, lower into the earth. One officer struck a match to a lantern he'd taken from a table containing a dozen or more just like it. Yellow flickering light struck unnerving shadows on the walls, and then Dean began to feel more like himself again. Darkness and the coppery smell of spilled blood were as familiar to him as druggist chemicals were to Jessie or servants were to Castiel.

Except there was no fresh coppery smell. He nearly slung his inner elbow over his nose and mouth to block out the sickening odor of old, rotting flesh, but stopped himself in case the men milling around the cellar took it as a sign of weakness.

Dean squinted. "Who moved the body?"

"We were looking for identifying marks," replied a faceless voice in the crowd.

"Where was it found?" Sam asked.

An officer hooked an arm in a motion for them to follow. Sam and Dean each glanced down at the headless and armless female torso partially wrapped in rags and twine. They stepped around the poor soul, careful not to disturb anything else about it. Together they marched yards down the wall where various locked vaults suggested cavernous openings for files and evidence in the future. The officer disappeared into one of those vaults and pointed out a black stain on the floor and the wall.

Sam crouched on the cement floor and reached out a hand to touch the stain but stopped short. Of course Dean knew why. If his brother used his second sight again without allowing the last experience to heal first, he could do serious injury to his body - even fatal injury. So Dean picked up the slack, crouching nearby and touching a handkerchief to the stain. He lifted it and found no residue on the fabric, which told him two things in that moment: the body was far older than the murders they'd already investigated and the body had been moved long before the other officers admitted.

"First victim?" asked Sam.

Dean nodded. "I'm thinking so. We need to rethink our timeline."

"Hey, has anyone identified the victim?" Sam questioned of the loitering officers.

"No, sir," replied one of them in a clipped voice. "There was no handbag or any other personal items."

"And I suppose the rest of the body hasn't been found?"

Another officer took that question. "I think not but we have men searching the property as we speak."

"And the coroner?" Dean continued the questioning.

"On his way presently, sir."

"I'll check out the corpse. You check out this room. Don't touch anything."

Cutting a harsh side eye, Sam still nodded. "I don't need a nursery maid."

"No, you don't, but I intend on keeping all of my limbs in tact," replied Dean in a low voice so the others couldn't make out his words. "If you touch anything and go back to the flat with another nosebleed, I'll have your lovebird to contend with and I'm making it a point never to deal with her. Lovebirds have sharp talons."

Before Sam could argue, Dean got up and retraced his tracks, following the awful stench of death to the dismembered body lying on the cellar floor. He steeled himself as he lowered to the floor. The thick odor swallowed him whole like a cloud of smoke as he pinched the fabric scraps between a careful thumb and index finger. Bloating had long since faded to nothing, which left the chest sunk low in spite of a pair of what once were lovely breasts. Greenish black skin barely concealed her former light complexion. Decomposition was in an advanced state compared to the fresh kills Dean had been exposed to in London thus far. He found it extremely difficult to believe no one smelled the horrendous odor of decay in the - what, maybe six to eight weeks - since the murder. The entire carpentry crew needed to be questioned. He made a note to request a list of workers on the new police building since the foundation stone was laid.

Then came the difficult part. Dean dropped his pencil and notepad on the floor to lean in closer and examine the corpse's wounds. He pulled the rags away from what were once shoulders. Peering at the cut marks, he decided it wasn't nearly as bloody or gruesome as some of the hack jobs he'd seen in the past. There was no evidence of blood flow in spite of the shoulder joints being carved apart with professional skill and that suggested the poor woman was dismembered postmortem. At least she was spared that torturous pain, he thought dismally. Yet the way she was taken apart pointed to a certain skill level that most average laborers didn't possess in his estimation.

So was she slaughtered by the Whitechapel killer or not?

Dean didn't know the answer. He loathed that uneasy sensation of not understanding who the victim was or who might have done in her short life. Without disturbing too much of the scene for the coroner's examination, he cut away a strip of the fabric wrapping her body. The twine got tucked into his notebook along with it. The most logical thing would be to take the fabric to as many textile shops as he could in an effort to at least narrow down what kind of woman she was in life. With some luck, someone would remember the exact woman who bought the fabric. Or perhaps it'd lead Dean to the killer.

"I'll figure out who hurt you," whispered Dean to the headless body.

Questions of how that woman ended up dead in the cellar of the new Scotland Yard building plagued Dean through the afternoon as he and Sam stopped into a few dressmakers nearby to show them the scrap of fabric. No one recognized the burgundy scrap with tiny pink printed flowers. It was such a strange feminine and delicate fabric for someone who ended up so brutally killed.

The Winchester brothers waved down a cab and climbed into it, eager for a drink and a moment to breathe and regroup. Horses nickered at the head of the cab. They rode through a traffic jam of carts, horses, carriages, and foot traffic, eventually making their way to Harvelle's in the very Whitechapel neighborhood in which their killer enjoyed hunting. It was just past the midday meal and a bit inappropriate for turning up at a pub in neighborhoods more established in high society, but enjoyed a lager or even full intoxication required no appointed hour there. Harvelle's was as crowded after the midday meal as it was in the middle of the night, albeit a slightly more subdued crowd. Men hunched over their glasses of half-consumed spirits, rather unwilling to strike up conversation. Not even the soiled doves in their tightly laced corsets were awake yet. They were just the sort of people Dean liked when he was knee-deep in a case, the kind that weren't going to bother him.

Sam and Dean weaved into the pub and snatched a table near the back. A staircase nearby allowed them a view of the girls as they began to emerge from their cribs upstairs. Given their profession, they couldn't work in a safer place in Whitechapel. He thought for certain that Mrs. Harvelle would throw herself in front of the Whitechapel butcher before she allowed him to hurt any more innocent girls. He respected the way she viewed her working girls as human souls worth more than the way their bodies were used for money.

A barman in a thick cotton apron brought a pair of dark drafts to the Winchester brothers without being prompted. "On the house," he muttered.

"Thanks?" Sam replied as a question.

"Mrs. Harvelle left orders that you boys are to be fed and watered without charge. So there you go." With that, the barman with the faint Irish lilt left the Winchesters' table.

Dean exchanged looks with his brother over their glass mugs. "Sounds like the lady of the house isn't receiving callers."

"I suppose not," answered Sam in a fake English accent.

"You think she's even in the building?"

"Sounds like she left to me." Sam lifted his glass and swallowed a generous mouthful. "Maybe we should ask Miss Jo. I think she likes you anyway."

Dean growled into his glass. "Too young, too innocent."

"Not enough of an Earl," replied Sam with an arched brow.

"Hey, not here. Quiet," Dean hissed as he glanced around the pub to see if anyone noticed.

With a faint smile, Sam reached for the bowl of boiled peanuts on the center of their table. "Just tell me one thing. Does your paramour make you happy?"

The use of a word that gave no hint of gender relieved Dean, making him appreciate his brother in that moment. Anyone within earshot would have taken the question for an inquiry into the budding romance with a fresh London flower. Still, the question took him by surprise the more time it gave to sink in. Sam usually ignored that darker, secret part of Dean that broke his ability to marry a woman and have a family like any other man. He pondered his response as he tasted a boiled peanut of his own, a fleeting thought rising in the background that he thought boiled peanuts were only eaten in the American South.

"I'm ... well, I'm in uncharted territory," Dean finally replied.

Sam's brows lifted. "I should think so."

"No, I don't mean the title or the money. I couldn't care less about the porcelain vases or bone china or whatever else my ... paramour ... has in that big old pile of bricks." He paused, dismantling the next peanut in the bowl. "There are feelings happening that I don't understand and after you told me about the ... paramour's spouse ... I don't know what's real and what's not." Salt melted on his tongue and he stared out of the window at the afternoon sunlight bleeding through the foggy street. "I've seen some things."

"Such as?"

Dean's eyes flickered back to his brother's face. "You cannot be squeamish if I tell you."

"Oh," replied Sam a little too quickly, "you mean this is about ... activities." He made a vague hand gesture that didn't mean anything in particular, which pointed to his desire to be both a supportive brother and a brother who lived in ignorance. "I mean, go ahead. I'll get my revenge at some point." He shrugged in a faint attempt to lighten the mood.

Dean gave him a moment to think it over before he walked through that door. Instead of the expected squeamishness, Sam leaned back in his chair and folded his arms carefully over his chest. He waited.

"Well," began Dean, leaning back as well, "the other night I went to see ... my paramour. We'll just say she then. She was in her kitchen and we talked for a long time. She heated up food but, for one thing, I've never actually seen her eat - just drink - and for another thing, her eyes...."

"...Her eyes what?"

"Her eyes turned blue."

Sam's brow furrowed. "I think her eyes are in fact blue, Dean."

"No, you don't understand." Leaning forward again, Dean rested his arms on the table. He lowered his voice before anybody else caught on to their conversation. "Her eyes glowed blue in the darkness of her kitchen. It was the middle of the night. I thought I was seeing a strange reflection from the lamp on the table - I was sitting at the table - but her eyes did shine like a light. I know what I saw. It was a preternatural light." Pausing, Dean wasn't sure if he needed a moment to absorb it or if he wanted to give Sam a moment to absorb it. He continued. "Then last night, we spent time together. You know what I mean. While we were--"

"--Yes, yes. You don't need to give me details," Sam interjected, eyes squeezed shut and nose wrinkled.

"But I do. That's the point," argued Dean. "While we bedded - all right, I'll use an easy word like bedded for your delicate ears - I saw things then too. Preternatural things."

"You were hungover this morning. Perhaps you had entirely too much."

Dean cocked his head at his brother. "Are you honestly trying to rationalize what I experienced after you and blondie talked with me this morning about the devils in people?"

"Fine," sighed Sam, squirming under the strain of understanding his brother's private life. "Continue."

And so, Dean Winchester took the risk of opening up to his brother and confiding the deepest truth to any man. The truth of a man's most vulnerable moments both falling into and making love. To his credit, Sam sat through the story without making his discomfort too obvious. He shifted in his chair from time to time, obviously unfamiliar with the way men loved each other. It was tough to make someone like Sam understand when he'd lived an entire life wishing only for the love of a good, sweet woman.

By the end of Dean's story, Sam was leaning on the table as well and the pair of them tried to puzzle through the likelihood of absinthe and laudanum conjuring such a precise hallucination. Sam remained of the opinion that it was possible, while Dean knew exactly what he'd seen. Those images never altered in his memory, nor did he forget a second of it. They debated through bowls of Irish stew and three more dark beers served warm like they did it in Germany but neither of them came to any resolution more than the most obvious one. Jessie had indeed told them the truth. Once Sam and Dean swapped details of their very different overnight experiences, they began to see differences in the demon women in the wilderness and Castiel, the Earl of Rothes, in the bedroom.

"If none of them are human," Sam said quietly, "then I think it's safe to say they're not the same ... thing ... either. I think your paramour would have had black eyes and no wings if he was the same as them."

"What the hell is going on here?" hissed Dean.

"I don't know," Sam hissed back, "but you went to bed with something that isn't a human."

The implications of that sank in hard for Dean. His mind reeled around the time spent with Castiel until he found himself saying, "I don't think it matters to me."

"You can't be serious. Dean, you can't love a devil," whispered Sam.

"He's not a demon," Dean shot back.

"How do you know?"

"I know it in my gut."

Sam shook his head. "Not good enough."

Mind still reeling, Dean cycled through several ideas until he settled on an old memory. "Sammy, when we were small, Momma told us stories about Scotland. Her people were from there. I know you don't remember."

"So?"

"So, Momma told old stories about testing people for devils and dark spirits hiding inside of them. They were just stories when I was that little, of course, but I think there might be things we can use to find out if this is all true. We need to know exactly how much danger we're in here, although I don't think Cas is the threat. You might. I believe I know how to prove he's different from the people you saw last night."

"Shh, you just said too much out loud," Sam warned.

"Nobody heard. I don't care anyway." As he bolted up from his chair, Dean tossed money on the table even if Mrs. Harvelle instructed that they could eat and drink for free.

Already up and moving, Sam asked, "Where are we going?"

"We need a library and a church," Dean said, shouldering through the pub.

"That's not a strange to-do list at all." Dutifully, however, Sam marched alongside his brother.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [For Whom May Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738243) by [Make_No_Apology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Make_No_Apology/pseuds/Make_No_Apology)




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